Integrity Commission flags false firearm records, missing ammunition and FLA server breakdown

The Integrity Commission has raised serious concerns about how the Firearm Licensing Authority handled firearm and ammunition records, pointing to deliberate changes in its electronic files, weak stock controls and the loss of important digital evidence after a server breakdown.

The 131-page document was laid in Parliament on Tuesday, eight weeks after it was delivered at the end of March. Its tabling came only after a court ruling. The report examined the FLA’s Licence Management System, the central database used to record firearm ownership, ammunition buying and the movement of dealers’ stock.

Investigators said former database administrator Shevon Robinson placed false transactions directly into a dealer’s profile on the system. The report said there was no written instruction from the dealer and no formal approval for the entries.

The commission’s findings said the records were not simple mistakes. Instead, they were described as deliberate entries designed to produce transactions that did not happen, giving the impression that sales and purchases were genuine and that items which could not be located had been properly covered in the database.

One major example involved 6,000 rounds of ammunition which the system showed as sold to three people. The IC said one of the named persons had not bought ammunition for years, another rejected the claim that the purchase was made, and the third person was already deceased when the transaction was entered.

The report also pointed to major problems in the FLA’s physical inventory. It said thousands of rounds of ammunition, and possibly firearms, could not be traced. Investigators also raised concern that a public notice about destruction of items, dated April 26, 2021, may have been used to hide gaps in stock. Rather than acknowledging that items were missing, the report said they may have been placed on record as destroyed.

The commission did not uphold every complaint it reviewed, but it said there were clear breaches and weaknesses. In a focused check of 714 records from a total inventory of 4,103, auditors found that 335 rounds of ammunition were missing. In one cited case, a bag expected to hold 519 rounds contained only 219, while the report said 191 rounds were not accounted for.

Investigators also found broader weaknesses in how stock was stored and tracked. The report referred to worn storage bags, some with holes, labels that were fading, crowded vault space and poor methods for keeping track of inventory.

A major difficulty for the probe was the loss of the electronic trail that could have shown who made changes in the system. The IC said the FLA’s main server had a “catastrophic failure” in 2019 and that no backup system was operating at the time. Because of that, important logs were lost, limiting the commission’s ability to determine criminal responsibility even though it found evidence that records had been changed.

Kevon Stephenson, the Integrity Commission’s director of investigations, said the missing electronic information badly affected the investigation.

“The DI recommends that, given the critical nature of the operation of the FLA, if not yet done, the FLA must ensure that their servers are properly maintained and that a backup server exists. This may ensure that, in the event of a failure of the main server, all data is not lost,” Stephenson stated.

“The DI's recommendation is grounded in the fact that the FLA's server apparently suffered a catastrophic failure, the data stored thereon could not be recovered, and there was no backup storage in place,” he added.

The report did not make a final finding that there had been an organised cover-up. However, it concluded that firearm transaction data inside the official system had been altered, ammunition was physically missing, inventory safeguards were inadequate and key digital evidence had disappeared.

Among its proposed fixes, the IC said the FLA must require a strict written process before any data entry is made. It recommended that no FLA staff member be allowed to change dealer-facing transaction databases unless there is a written request from an authorised firearm dealer, kept on file, along with management approval.

The commission also called for the FLA to quickly increase the capacity of its main vault, improve how inventory is tracked and replace damaged security storage bags so that identifying labels do not fade or tear.

On technology safeguards, the report said the FLA’s high-security role requires proper server maintenance schedules and working offsite backups, so that major hardware failures do not again wipe out critical data.