The bribery probe at the Customs and Trade Administration (CTA) has been hit by a few hiccups over the past three weeks that have left many employees currently on leave disgruntled.
Since they were slapped with letters to proceed on indefinite leave close to two months ago, the employees numbering around seventeen have been reporting regularly to the team to know their fate and have been turned away for three weeks running.
“We are in a situation where we are not sure what is going to happen to us and they have us going back and forth, back and forth, when they have our contact details and can just call us”, an employee recently said.
The group, including a few in the upper echelons of the CTA, was told that this week the investigating team will determine what happens to them.
But as the probe nears a close for the employees, critics are still questioning what action if any would be taken against Fidelity Investment Inc which is at the centre of the multimillion dollar polar beer scam involving the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA).
In April a key Fidelity figure spilled information to the task force, fingering top GRA officials in the scandal and revealing how the company had entrusted a Customs broker with $142 million to get the shipment off 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 beer.
The sum of $32 million was then paid to the revenue body in taxes and another $70 million was paid to a senior customs official who allowed the shipment to leave the wharf and who is also alleged to have facilitated documents being falsified for Fidelity.
To date five GRA employees have been sacked for their alleged involvement in the scam but staff at the revenue body referred to the dismissals as an attack on the lower level employees, adding that the real perpetrators behind the fraud have thus far been spared.
