Four employees of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) were last evening being grilled by police in connection with a multi-million dollar fraud which was uncovered in the entity’s computer security system.
The GRA said in a press release issued last evening that it suspected the fraud was being carried out by cashiers in collusion with personnel of its Information Technology (IT) Department.
The release said information on the fraud was passed to Police Commissioner Henry Greene and those suspected of being involved —four cashiers and an IT technical person, who is the alleged mastermind of the plot — were currently being interrogated.
The GRA statement said the fraud was successfully detected because of the proper functioning of the internal control system in addition to the meticulous work carried out by some staff members. It stated that the thorough work of its staff led to a special team probing deeper into the IT system which subsequently unearthed the fraud.
Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Autho-rity, Khurshid Sattaur has since stated that the sum defrauded was likely to run into millions of dollars, but it was too early for him to make a precise estimate. Sattaur said the fraud is suspected to have commenced over a year ago. He noted that a significant amount of revenue would have been fraudulently converted on some days.
The GRA said in the press statement that it recently implemented a new IT system valued in excess of US$6 million through a loan agreement with the Inter American Development Bank (IDB). The system, it noted, has strengthened GRA’s safeguards against fraud and corruption, adding that the integrated database has high security features which are capable of tracking any unauthorised use of the system. Sattaur stated that this feature of the system has provided the necessary information on the persons suspected to be involved in the fraud.
Further, Sattaur said, he is not ruling out the linkages that the fraud may have with prominent city businesses, “because of the high prevalence of these businesses featuring in the information being provided by the system”. He reiterated calls for the business community to guard against the temptation of engaging in unscrupulous acts to defraud the state of revenue while at the same time compromising the integrity of officers within the GRA, according to the statement.
This latest revelation follows on the heels of the Polar beer scandal involving Fidelity Investments, which was said to have defrauded the GRA of millions of revenue dollars. Fidelity was accused of smuggling Polar beer into the country and evading taxes.
A string of individual and joint charges, ranging from fraud and forgery and conspiracy to commit a felony, were read to 12 GRA officers and two brokers in April.
The charges were laid almost four months after a special task force, headed by Auditor General Deodat Sharma, recommended criminal charges for those who were allegedly complicit in the fraud.