Suriname’s Finance Minister Armand Achaibersing says the result of an internal investigation into alleged multi-million-dollar fraud at the Ministry of Finance and Planning will not be known until Friday.
The government had earlier confirmed the withdrawal of the funds from the account in April and June, with the perpetrators presenting false documents to the Central Bank of Suriname (CBvS) for cash.
The matter was brought to public attention when opposition legislator, Melvin Bouva of the National Democratic Party (NDP), headed by former president, Desi Bouterse, raised the issue in Parliament last week.
On Tuesday, Achaibersing told the National Assembly how the scam took place, in which, according to the provisional investigations, SR$46.9 million (One SR$=US$0.04 cent) was stolen from the ministry.
Police on Monday detained several people, and the authorities said the preliminary investigation shows that the stolen funds were transferred to a bank account at the Finabank and that the forged payment orders were presented to the Central Bank of Suriname for payment.
Achaibersing said the investigation has so far revealed that the payment orders did not come from the system of the ministry.
“What happened is that the perpetrators scanned real payment documents and then changed the amounts, as well as the name of the recipient and his bank account number.”
The false papers were then presented to the CBvS between authentic payment documents, where the irregularities were only discovered on the fourth occasion. On the three previous occasions, the perpetrators managed to receive SR$46,909,602.42, the minister said.
He said on April 25 and June 14, a total of more than SR$40.9 million was transferred to the bank account of one of the persons being questioned.
“Unfortunately, the procedures at the Central Bank have not been able to distinguish the false orders from the good ones,” Achaibersing said, adding that during the investigation, however, it was revealed that a transfer of SR$5,944,005 had taken place on January 25 and credited to the account of a messenger at the ministry.
The minister does not rule out the possibility of more cases. He expects that as the investigation progresses.
The minister said the scam came to light because of agreements between the CBvS and Finance regarding the implementation of the International Monetary Fund program that the perpetrators were not aware of, namely the so-called Primary Balance Target, whereby the difference between operating income and operating expenditure, had to be kept at a certain level.
“In connection with achieving the target, it was agreed with the Central Bank before the last week of June that no more major expenditure would be made, except for salaries and some urgent matters.
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