Chartered accountant and forensic auditor Terrence Jaskaran told the court yesterday that his examination of certified Statements of Poll from Guyana’s 2020 General Elections showed a 20,243-vote difference between the votes recorded for APNU+AFC and the figures contained in the March 5, 2020 declaration for Region Four.
Jaskaran, who was accepted by the court as an expert in forensic accounting and auditing despite objections from the defence, told the election fraud case that his analysis showed 116,215 votes for APNU+AFC on the certified Statements of Poll, compared with 136,458 votes recorded in the March 5 Form 24 declaration.
He said that represented a variance of 20,243 votes in favour of the figure contained in the declaration.
When the same Statements of Poll were compared with a second Region Four declaration dated March 13, 2020, Jaskaran said APNU+AFC was recorded with 136,057 votes, producing a variance of 19,842 votes compared with the SOP total.
The figures formed part of a report prepared by Jaskaran after he was contracted by the Ministry of Home Affairs in August 2020 as a forensic audit consultant attached to the Criminal Investigation Department.
According to his testimony, on May 25, 2021, he was asked to conduct a tabulation and analysis of certified copies of Statements of Poll from the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections and compare those figures with the declarations contained in Form 24.
He began the exercise on June 3, 2021, and completed it on July 28.
Jaskaran said he worked from certified copies of the Statements of Poll obtained from the Registrar of the Supreme Court. He created Excel spreadsheets for each region, recording the votes listed for each political party on each Statement of Poll.
He then added the votes for each party and compared the resulting totals against the corresponding Form 24 declaration.
“Any variances were highlighted and those were noted in my report,” he told the court.
Region One also showed differences
Jaskaran’s evidence showed that the differences were not confined to Region Four.
For Region One, he said the certified Statements of Poll showed 3,823 APNU+AFC votes, compared with 3,905 votes in the declaration — a difference of 82 votes.
The PPP/C was recorded with 7,827 votes on the SOPs, compared with 8,022 votes in the declaration, representing a 195-vote difference.
The LJP figures differed by five votes, while the PRP figures differed by one vote. The URP figure was the same in both sets of records, although Jaskaran noted that one SOP, number 1078, was blank when he examined it.
There were no variances recorded by him for Region Two.
For Region Three, he reported a two-vote difference for ANUG, with 308 votes on the SOPs compared with 310 on the declaration, and a one-vote difference for Change Guyana, with 317 votes compared with 318.
The other parties’ figures he read for Region Three matched the declarations.
It was in Region Four, however, that the most significant differences emerged in Jaskaran’s analysis.
In addition to the APNU+AFC figures, he testified that the certified SOPs recorded 80,288 PPP/C votes, compared with 77,329 on the March 5 declaration — a difference of 2,959 fewer votes on the declaration.
For the March 13 declaration, the PPP/C figure was recorded in Jaskaran’s testimony as 77,231, producing a difference of 3,057 votes compared with his SOP total.
The smaller parties also recorded variances, although substantially lower than those identified for the two major political groupings.
Jaskaran also disclosed limitations to his analysis.
He said three SOPs — numbers 4120, 4153 and 4774 — were blank when he examined them and therefore could not be included in his calculations.
Two other SOPs, numbers 4570 and 4550, were not presented to him and were likewise excluded.
Defence challenges expert status
Before Jaskaran presented the findings, defence attorneys challenged his qualification to give expert evidence in an election-related case.
Jaskaran told the court that he is a chartered accountant and forensic auditor with more than a decade of experience. He said he has conducted audits across banking, finance, retail, manufacturing, hospitality, pension funds, government agencies and other sectors.
He also testified that his professional work has been subject to periodic reviews by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana, with his latest review in 2023 receiving a satisfactory assessment.
Under cross-examination, however, the defence pressed him on whether any of his individual forensic assignments had been independently peer-reviewed by another forensic auditor.
Jaskaran maintained that his professional files are periodically reviewed by the relevant professional bodies.
Senior Counsel Nigel Hughes questioned whether experience auditing financial records could properly translate into expertise in examining an electoral process.
Attorney Eusi Anderson similarly argued that Jaskaran had not demonstrated experience auditing elections or election results and that the numerical analysis involved in banking records was fundamentally different from electoral tabulation.
The defence also questioned Jaskaran about his membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana and his previous service on one of its committees.
Prosecutor Darshan Ramdhani, KC, defended Jaskaran’s expertise, arguing that his task was not to determine the legality or validity of ballots but to examine numbers contained in Statements of Poll and compare them with declared figures.
Ramdhani said the court was dealing with a large volume of documents containing numerical information and that Jaskaran’s accounting and analytical expertise would assist the court in understanding the data.
After hearing the competing submissions, Principal Magistrate Faith McGusty overruled the defence objections.
The Magistrate said the matter “boils down to numbers” and noted Jaskaran’s experience in accounting dating back to 2011.
She said the court would still have to determine the weight to be attached to his evidence and noted that the defence remained free to call another expert to offer a different opinion.
Jaskaran’s 124-page report was admitted as Exhibit NGE.
The trial is continuing, with the forensic accountant expected to take the court through further findings from his analysis of the 2020 election records.
The testimony forms part of the ongoing case arising from allegations surrounding the conduct and tabulation of the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
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