Paul Slowe gets bail on sexual assault, fraud charges

Having been charged in absentia back in May with fraud and three counts of sexual assault, retired Assistant Commissioner of Police Paul Slowe finally made his appearance at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts on Friday where he was arraigned before Principal Magistrate Sherdel Isaacs-Marcus.
Slowe along with other retired and serving senior officers of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) are accused of collecting payment totalling $10 million for the revision of the GPF’s raft of Standing Orders, which was never done, according to the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU).
The others implicated are retired Assistant Commissioners Clinton Conway and Claude Whittaker; Senior Superintendents George Fraser and Marcelene Washington; retired Senior Superintendent Michael Sutton; Superintendent Mark Gilbert; Assistant Commissioner Royston Andries-Junor; and Assistant Superintendent Marlon Kellman.
It is alleged that Slowe, Conway, Whittaker, Fraser, Gilbert, Andries-Junor, Washington, Sutton, and Kellman, between March 1, 2019, and July 7, 2020, at the GPF’s Headquarters, Eve Leary, Georgetown, conspired together and with other persons unknown to defraud the GPF of $10,056,000 by paying Slowe, Conway, Whittaker, Fraser, and Gilbert, the said monies without complying with the proper procedures, purportedly to do a review of the GPF’s Standing Orders, which had already commenced in July 2018 and been concluded in March 2019 by the Strategic Planning Unit.
It is further alleged while performing duties as Finance Officer for the GPF between July 1, 2019, and July 31, 2019, at the GPF’s Headquarters, Eve Leary, Georgetown, Sutton wilfully misconducted himself when he falsely signed seven payment vouchers as the accounting officer, which he was not authorised to do, enabling Slowe, Conway, Whittaker, Fraser, and Gilbert to be paid $1,000,766, without the approval of Daniella McCalmon, the accounting officer, and without any reasonable excuse or justification.
It is also alleged that on three occasions in 2019 – between March 26 and April 2; on March 29 and on April 2 – at Police Headquarters, Eve Leary, Georgetown, Slowe sexually assaulted a senior Policewoman by rubbing her left leg and foot without her consent. Slowe was not required to plead to the indictable charges. He was released on bail in the sum of $325,000 and will return to court on November 26.
He is being represented by Attorneys-at-Law Selwyn Pieters and Patrice Henry. Slowe, a former Chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) served in the GPF for some 37 years.
Investigations by SOCU revealed that former Police Commissioner Leslie James had hired Slowe, Conway, Whittaker, Gilbert, and Fraser to conduct a complete revision of the Standing Orders in March 2019.
According to SOCU, James did not prepare a budget for the service that was offered, nor did he make a contractual agreement with specifications of what was to be revised and terms of payments. He never even sent for, or received, approval from the Permanent Secretary of the then Ministry of Public Security, nor the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB), SOCU revealed.
In a press statement, SOCU said that the payments, amounting to $10 million, should have been budgeted for and approved by the NPTAB. The GPF has a raft of Standing Orders which comprises 104 orders. These very Standing Orders that James hired the former officers to revise had already been revised by highly qualified and competent policy analysts of the Strategic Planning Unit of the Force.
More than $10 million was paid to the former officers, who did not provide the GPF with a completed revised raft of Standing Orders. Payment accounts were prepared individually from March 2019 upon instructions from the Head of the Strategic Planning Unit, Andries-Junor.
Upon his transfer from the unit in November 2019, he instructed the new Head of SPU to ensure she continues making out payment accounts for the said officers. She made out accounts as instructed until February 2020.
An examination of over 60 payment vouchers showed that Washington and Sutton, who were former Police Finance Officers, signed 15 payment vouchers collectively as the accounting officers. They had no authority to do so. The only accounting officer of the Police Force is the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs (former Ministry of Public Security).
The Permanent Secretary gave no such authority to them. As a result of what they did, Kellman entered the information into the Integrated Financial Management and Accounting Systems (IFMAS) although the vouchers were not approved and signed by the substantive accounting officer, McCalmon.