While the President has quite appropriately ordered that vehicles in question be seized and an investigation into the granting of concessions prior to August 2003 be done, it is unclear why the report has not also been submitted to the police for their immediate action.

Further, the inter-ministry and intra-ministry paper trail which should provide the most convincing evidence when cases stemming from this investigation come to trial can be easily tampered with and destroyed. Two things should happen immediately: all records pertaining to the 86 cases investigated should be seized and handed over to an investigating team comprising the police, state auditors and others as becomes necessary. The documents should include the remigration register at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which shockingly was not provided to the investigators and which according to the officer under investigation had been "misplaced". The register will tell exactly what proportion of the 86 letters was properly signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and what proportion was bogus. It must be found.

Secondly, the state employees who have been questioned and are at the centre of the investigation should be interdicted from duty and should have no further dealings with their offices to allow for unencumbered investigations. These strictures should apply also to the Secretary to the Treasury, Mr Neermal Rekha, who has already implied in a statement to this newspaper that he is prepared to give the requisite space for necessary investigation. These investigations cannot be optimally pursued were Mr Rekha to remain in his position.

All of the documents dealing with remigration concessions prior to August, 2003 at both ministries will also have to be gathered by investigators and removed from under the jurisdiction of the two ministries.

Some of the most blatant types of corruption were perpetrated at these two ministries and the officers in question appeared to be oblivious to, or dismissive of, any likely sanction from the authorities. This mindset is worrying. It would be instructive to learn how exactly this investigation was started and why the control systems in the two ministries hopelessly failed to detect the malfeasance.

Among the most egregious transgressions picked up in the report done by an Office of the Auditor General auditor are the following.

The signature of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the stamp associated with his office were forged on documents meant to verify the status of remigrants. Not only was the signature forged but it was done on a photocopy of a document when the only authentic document that could be sent by the Foreign Ministry and received by the Finance Ministry was a carbon copy of the original document, the original being kept in a file at the Foreign Ministry.

Secondly, the granting of duty-free concessions at the Ministry of Finance was backdated with respect to a number of applications to avoid the new system whereby the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) would be the agency dispensing concessions. How this could happen without being detected by senior ministry officials entrusted with safeguarding the purse strings of the country is baffling. Prospective remigrants have to present themselves at the Ministry of Finance for verification interviews and the most glancing of inquiries and barest scrutiny of documents would have revealed the intended fraud right away. That the scheme succeeded is instructive.

Thirdly, duty-free concessions were granted to individuals who were claiming ownership of vehicles in excess of 4500 cc when this was clearly prohibited by the law. Moreover, the required certificate of title to ownership of the vehicle was not always presented - invoices were improperly accepted in some instances - and in other cases the person making the application for concessions was not the person whose name was inscribed on the certificate of title.

Fourthly, some applicants did not own the vehicle for the mandatory period prior to application and some were not present in the country within the designated time to qualify for the concessions.

Fifthly, in the approval of the concessions, the Treasury was further defrauded as there was no pro rata treatment of vehicle capacities above 2000 cc.

The report paints a very sordid picture of the presumed collaboration and deliberateness in the commission of fraud at, and between these two ministries. It provides an immediate basis for charges on multiple counts against some of the individuals and with further work it should be relatively easy to conclude cases against all of the participants in this scheme.

The investigation should not only encompass the public officials but also the private individuals/`remigrants' who procured favours and corrupted the system by making false declarations and applications. All attempts should be made to retrieve the revenue lost to the Treasury as a result of this public malfeasance.

This mushrooming scandal must be a signal lesson to the government about the ease with which corruption can slither through the halls of high places and why a close watch must be kept. We have Integrity legislation that is clearly not producing the results necessary - a phenomenon that the Jamaica Gleaner Chairman Oliver Clarke pointed out during a recent visit here was also a problem in his island nation.

In a country awash with donor funding and throbbing with massive public sector infrastructural projects, the Jagdeo administration has to ask itself whether it is doing enough to safeguard public funds and whether its central government monitoring mechanism needs to be bolstered. A swift investigation of the granting of remigrant concessions over the last two years should provide a clear idea of how deep-seated corruption was in this particular area. An astounding 55 of the 86 applications examined by investigators were flawed or bogus and should not have been granted remigration concessions.