During an exclusive interview earlier today, High Commissioner of the British High Commission, Greg Quinn, told Guyana Standard that all collaborations with the Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) came to a halt earlier this year when Sam Sittlington’s service was terminated.
Sittlington, a UK security expert, was fired after it became public that he had established a local branch of a white collar crime intelligence firm, known as The Fraud Company, that he runs in the United Kingdom (UK).
This morning, High Commissioner Quinn said, “There is nothing being done with SOCU at the moment and the assistance to SOCU is currently the subject of a review back in the UK.”
He said that the review is not at a stage that can give any idea as to what is next for relations between the UK and SOCU.
The programme with SOCU was slated to run until March of 2020. However, Quinn said that the UK does not have anyone lined up at the moment to replace Sittlington.
Quinn said, “The review will decide the nature of any ongoing relations with SOCU. The review results will not be imminent…it can take another few months. The project was supposed to be finished at the end of March and one of the discussions going on is, is it feasible to actually find someone new and bring them in so that they can make an impact before the end of the project.”
The envoy indicated that it is not beyond the bound of possibility that the project could be extended but was keen to note that such would “be difficult because of the way funding works.”
