One of the more interesting revelations that emerged from the long-awaited Customs/Fidelity Report was that there appeared to be no love lost between the investigating team and Guyana Revenue Authority during the course of the investigation.
Certainly, the report is unambiguous in the view that the GRA sought, deliberately, to “frustrate” (and here frustrate can mean any number of things) the work of the team. The report makes reference to various instances in which documents deemed pertinent to the investigation were simply not handed over by the GRA and it certainly states that the Commissioner General himself sanctioned the handing over of documents though it seems – based on the language used in the report – that the Commissioner General may well have been asserting what he believed to be the prerogative of his office to insist on the application of the correct procedures in pursuit of the documents.
These are amazing and amazingly candid revelations particularly given the fact that we had been promised the fullest cooperation of the GRA in the investigation process. Few people, we believe, would have expected that the investigating team would have stated so candidly in its report that the GRA was really more of a hindrance than a help in the course of the investigation.
And while the contents of the report point to some measure of thoroughness on the part of the investigating team the fact that it concedes that some of the documentation which the investigating team requested was simply not handed over, leaves one to wonder about the completeness of the investigation. After all, when the disappearance of files and documents coincide with their particular relevance to an important investigation one has every right to grow deeply suspicious.
The implication that underpins the charge that the GRA sought to frustrate the investigating team has its own underpinnings, not least of which is the implication that there were things which the GRA simply did not want the task force to discover.
It would, of course, be unfair to use what the investigating team deemed to be efforts by the GRA to frustrate the investigation as a basis for criticizing the thoroughness of the report though – if the truth be told – the task force itself has said by implication that it would have wished to do more than it did.
Of course, the GRA may well have its own story to tell and that might be an altogether different story. If, however, there were instances in which the task force sought information pertinent to its investigation and did not receive that information then surely one is wont to wonder what may have transpired during what the report says was a calculated and massive rip-off that may never come to public attention.
