Customs officers ensnared in a racket with Fidelity Investments have said they assisted government officials to evade duties, President Bharrat Jagdeo disclosed yesterday and he challenged the revenue authority employees to call the names of the officials as he vowed he was not going to protect anyone.
Speaking publicly for the first time since investigators homed in the malpractices at Customs House, Jagdeo told reporters at a press conference yesterday that the probe which he initiated last week will go deeper than the Fidelity Investment scheme, noting that there was a major ring of corrupt officers who had been robbing the state of revenue.
Since the initiation of the probe two customs officials have been sent on leave while several others are being closely monitored.
Crime Chief Seelall Persaud would only say that investigations were continuing when asked for an update yesterday on the matter. Stabroek News was told that the probe has exposed the shady dealings of a few in the hierarchy of customs and has at the same time raised questions about a possible smuggling ring that has operated for sometime.
Asked to comment on the issue which the Guyana Revenue Authority has not said much about, Jagdeo said that he was informed by GRA Commissioner, Khurshid Sattaur about the fraud. He said that information garnered so far has revealed that the corruption went beyond the problems with Fidelity Investments.
The President noted that based upon what he was told the scale of the corruption warranted a multi-sector probe and he so instructed that the Police Force, the Auditor General, the Anti-Smuggling Task Force and the GRA board conduct an investigation.
Fortune
“We did this because it may require us looking at people’s assets,” Jagdeo asserted. According to the head of state, some people would be amazed at the “fortune possessed by some of these public servants”. He said with no other source of income some of the officers ensnared in the fraudulent scheme have assets 100 times more than what they were working for. “So the investigation has been launched…I don’t know where it is now, but it will go deeper than the Fidelity Investment case, it will go deep,” the President declared. On the implicating of government officials by the customs officers, Jagdeo told reporters that the employees had a lot of reach, noting that they had helped a lot of people. “They said they know of many others including government officials… well I am making it clear. You give their names publicly or to the investigating team. There is no one who is protected, when I launched the task force (it was) to get to the bottom of the matter and it is not just one matter from what is seen it is recurring. There is a system as to how the shakedown takes place,” Jagdeo said.
The officers who were sent on leave last week were subjected to more than 24 hours of extensive questioning by members of the multi-sector investigating team set up by the President. Stabroek News had been reliably informed that Jagdeo ordered an independent probe into the GRA’s dealings with Fidelity over the past few months after learning of the alleged involvement of the senior custom officials who were exposed by a key figure at Fidelity. That Fidelity figure is also likely to face a series of corruption charges.
Information from sources reveal that a series of meetings was recently held between the GRA and a key Fidelity figure and that it was at the most recent meeting that Fidelity proposed a deal with the revenue body: Fidelity would reveal how 73,000 cases of polar beer were cleared from the wharf without the requisite duties being paid but only in exchange for the charges instituted against the company being dropped.
Fidelity then fingered senior GRA officials by revealing how a customs broker was entrusted with $142M to get the shipment from the wharf.
The man reportedly came up with a deal with customs to clear the polar beer under the category of ‘assorted soft drinks’, which draws less tax than the polar beers.
The sum of $32M was then paid to the revenue body in taxes and another $70M was paid to a senior customs official who allowed the shipment to leave the wharf. The official is also alleged to have facilitated documents being falsified for Fidelity. The rest of the money went to the broker.
Within days of the deal being struck, someone reported to a key GRA official that the beers had left the wharf without taxes being paid resulting in the GRA moving to seal off the Fidelity bond at Broad Street on January 16 this year.
According to sources an investigation was launched but it was some of the same people who allegedly struck the deal who were placed on the GRA team to probe the Fidelity polar beer fraud.
The matter later ended up in court. Sources say that after this information was recently related to the GRA the revenue body demanded credible evidence from Fidelity and also informed the President and the bribery probe was subsequently launched.
Though the GRA could have initiated the probe on its own, too many senior officials were fingered for an internal investigation to be carried out, sources said.
A string of legal matters are still before the courts involving Fidelity and GRA over the polar beer shipment.
