No po­lice file has been sub­mit­ted to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard on the A&V Drilling al­leged “fake oil” is­sue.

Gas­pard con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion via a What­sApp re­sponse on ques­tions about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion’s sta­tus yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing state­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Mon­day in Par­lia­ment.

While re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions in Par­lia­ment about the foren­sic au­dit in­to the A&V Drilling/oil is­sue on Mon­day, Row­ley said, “Petrotrin con­clud­ed this process not on­ly by us­ing the tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise but se­nior coun­sel to col­late and re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions and all of those mat­ters, all of that doc­u­men­ta­tion, all of those re­ports are in the pos­ses­sion of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.”

A&V had been ac­cused of re­ceiv­ing some US$11.5 mil­lion from Petrotrin af­ter al­leged­ly re­port­ing an in­ac­cu­rate amount of crude oil de­liv­ered to the Petrotrin re­fin­ery in 2017. The find­ings were re­vealed in an in­ter­nal au­dit claim that was ex­posed by the Op­po­si­tion in 2017.

Gas­pard ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that his of­fice did ob­tain a file from Petrotrin and his of­fice would al­so give ad­vice as need­ed.

“A file was sub­mit­ted and I for­ward­ed it to the po­lice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion. There are no in­ves­ti­ga­tions at my of­fice. From time to time my of­fice has pro­vid­ed the po­lice with ad­vice-some­times as they re­quest it and some­times when I think it is nec­es­sary,” he said.

The DPP made it clear that the po­lice had not sub­mit­ted any file in re­la­tion to this mat­ter to date.

“The mat­ter is with the po­lice. No file has been sub­mit­ted. Files are sub­mit­ted af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been com­plet­ed. This in­ves­ti­ga­tion has not been com­plet­ed.”