GPF claims Bascom admitted to colluding with businessman to “go after” Mohamed’s security
Hours after his press conference, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) has fired back, claiming that Police Sergeant Dion Bascom, who accused several ranks of taking bribes, admitted to his superiors of conspiring with an Essequibo businessman to “go after” Mohamed’s security Mark Richmond.
“The GPF maintains that Bascom then informed one of his superiors that a popular businessman from Essequibo was using him to go after Mark Richmond, who is known to him,” a statement from the law enforcement agency noted on Saturday morning.
It was city businessman Azruddin Mohamed, on Wednesday who, in a Facebook post, said one of his competitors in the gold industry is the driving force behind the Police Sergeant’s allegations. In fact, he alleged that Bascom and the gold dealer were close friends.
But on Friday, Sergeant Bascom, among other things, poured cold water on Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum’s contention that the Force does not have any device that can track calls using a laptop.
Bascom explained he was present when this device was used during the investigation of Ricardo Fagundes, who was riddled with bullets in March of 2021.
But the Force on Saturday said that it can “firmly state” that Bascom was at no time at the crime scene on “official duty” and that the allegations made by the Sergeant are “blatant lies.”
“Bascom [continues] his unintelligent and wholly inaccurate interpretation of the work he was observing from the back seat of a car, by his superior officer, by claiming that the officer was in some magical and ‘Star Wars-like’ manner using a computer to triangulate the position of a suspect and track his movements in a murder case hours after the murder took place,” the statement posited.
According to the Force, Fagundes’s close friend, Roger Khan, through his lawyer, informed them that Rondell Bacchus was one of the suspects captured on CCTV footage opening fire on the night.
“The Police then made checks at the prison since the last information the police had on Rondell Bacchus was that he was in prison, and a senior prison official indicated that he had since been released and that the ‘information’ or ‘chatter’ from prisoners was that one of the men in the video footage obtained at the crime scene appeared to be Rondell Bacchus.”
Against this background, the Force said checks were made for Bacchus, but he was nowhere to be found.
“The Police issued a wanted bulletin on April 06, 2021, for him. A mere hour after the wanted bulletin was published, Rondell Bacchus turned himself into the police in the company of his lawyer and not in the company of Dion Bascom, who made such claims.”
Bascom took social media via storm hours after he was released from Police custody after being arrested in connection with a drug bust at a Norton Street, Georgetown residence.
In the Facebook live, which he has since removed, Bascom claimed that it was a conspiracy to kill him and cover-up Fagundes’s murder.
