The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) said on Friday that implementation of its Total Revenue Integrated Processing System (TRIPS) was not a one-man show and it was “erroneous” to believe that a few functionaries have been administering systems in the organisation.
GRA made this point in a press release, in which it took issue with certain aspects of a Stabroek Business article of the same date under the headline ‘System of allocating sensitive responsibilities inside GRA may have incubated Fidelity fraud’.
“It is important to demystify the erroneous belief that a few ‘functionaries’ were on their own in administering systems, more particularly implementing [TRIPS] the release said.
TRIPS replaced ASYCUDA and became functional simultaneously with the introduction of VAT in January 2007.
Commissioner-General Khurshid Sattaur is quoted in the release as saying that, “the TRIPS implementation was not a one-man show. In fact there were various committees set up to ensure its successful implementation. There were hiccups no doubt as one would expect in any new system.
However, the point is that there were representatives from all the necessary functional areas involved in determining and institutionalizing various modules of the TRIPS. The risk management module, for instance, had a committee with representatives from VAT and Excise Tax, Customs and Trade Administration, Enforcement and Internal Affairs; the overall TRIPS implementation committee comprised senior officials from Internal Revenue, IT, Customs, VAT, the Project Execution Unit and the Crown Agents.”
Sattaur said that from time to time additional persons were brought in to determine operational arrangements of the programme, for instance Customs and VAT representatives worked closely together to determine how TRIPS would flag high-risk entries and so on.
The Stabroek Business May 2 edition had quoted a source as saying that the question needed to be asked as to whether it was not “unwise, to say the least, to allocate certain clusters of responsibilities under any individual functionary” in an organisation like the GRA.
But the Commissioner-General maintained that there was no attempt at any time to deliberately exclude any department from the implementation of TRIPS but rather to involve them in critical areas relevant to their functions. Further, he said, there were ongoing programmes to align the agency further along functional lines that would see some areas becoming totally independent of others, while others were likely to be merged.
Sattaur also disclosed, the release said, that an Intelligence Unit will support the Enforcement Unit which will be totally de-linked from the Customs and Trade Administration, and this hopefully will reduce the incidence of collusion.
Another “grave misconception” contained in the Stabroek Business article, the release said, “is that the GRA’s system did not detect the fraud.” It reiterated that “it was the enforcement arm of the GRA that uncovered the illegal act during a raid carried out at the company’s [Fidelity’s] warehouse.”
The release said it was the GRA’s view that the general public was contributing to irregular activities with the GRA by aiding and abetting, since if officers were not coerced or induced into committing such acts, the incidence would be much less.
“The GRA therefore sees this as an attempt by the Stabroek Business to be partial on this matter, to misinform the nation and to prejudice the ongoing investigation,” the release quoted Sattaur as saying.
The release also took corrected a statement in the Stabroek Business editorial, which said that two Customs officers had been dismissed. “The officers who were dismissed were officers responsible for ensuring checks and balances in the system. They were Internal Affairs officers and not Customs officers as was stated,” the release said.
“We do not hold the view that all of the systems within the GRA are perfect. What we know, however, is that there are dedicated efforts to improve the overall operations and we therefore appeal to the general public to furnish us with any relevant information that would assist us in this regard.”
Persons can provide information to the Intelligence or Enforcement units of the GRA or the multi-agency taskforce at the Ministry of Finance.
The GRA also appealed to the media to allow the multi-agency task force to carry out its investigation in a professional manner without any biases and in that light it urged persons to desist from making uninformed and irresponsible statements but rather ensure that the nation was accurately informed on such matters.
