A substantial sum of money stolen from the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) by one of its employees was yesterday returned to the GRA one day after the money was discovered missing.

Commissioner General of the GRA Khurshid Sattaur told Stabroek News last evening that the missing money-which amounted to $976,000 in cash-was returned yesterday and that the police are now investigating the incident.  Sattaur said the incident was not one to cause undue alarm and said that the GRA had mechanisms in place to deal with the matter.

Meanwhile, the employee, who is at the centre of the incident, is still on the run, Stabroek News understands.

On Tuesday, the employee was charged with taking the day’s earnings to the Bank of Guyana but has not been seen since.   According to a release from the GRA “a Supervisor of GRA’s Revenue Accounting Department became suspicious when the staff who took the January 4 takings to the Bank of Guyana did not return within reasonable time.”  “After numerous calls to the employee’s mobile phone were not answered the supervisor went to the bank where he discovered that a sum of $976,000 was not deposited.”

The release said that efforts to contact the staff member were unsuccessful and that the matter was subsequently taken to the Brickdam Police Station.  “The staff has not reported for work since and he has not made any contact with the GRA”, the release said.

This incident comes months after a $300 million fraud was discovered at the GRA.  Charges were subsequently instituted against two staffers in connection with this matter.

Garfield Pearson, who worked as a clerk at the GRA, was charged with embezzling over $6 million. He was placed on $1 million bail.  According to the release, recently the High Court allowed a reduction in the $1 million bail. The other accused has reportedly fled from the jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, according to yesterday’s release, since the discovery of the $300m fraud the GRA “has strengthened controls in its revenue accounting systems to detect and prevent breach of procedure and fraud.“

Additionally “supervision of junior staff has been enhanced and greater emphasis is now placed on verification of source documents and cashier reports”, the release said.  Further, “the frequency and scope of audits done by the Internal Audit Division have been increased to capture more transactions within shorter intervals.”

The Commissioner General has expressed his disgust at the occurrences of these incidents.”There would be increased emphasis on integrity, professionalism and honesty of the staff of the organization and this has to start from the point of recruitment”, Sattaur was quoted as saying in the release. He also stressed the role of the Integrity Committee which was launched last month in achieving this objective.

The operations of the GRA have come under intense public scrutiny in the past.  It was the last Auditor General’s report, which led to the probe into Fidelity Investments after evidence of several irregularities within the Revenue Authority was discovered. These included evidence of signatures being changed even after documents had been inputted into the Total Revenue Integrated Processing System (TRIPS) at the Customs and Trade Administration (CTA) and the production of invoices that had been reproduced and which carried identical numbers because “someone forgot to change the numbers”.