Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Khurshid Sattaur has filed a suit against the Kaieteur News seeking in excess of $500 million in damages for what he claims is libel contained in its ‘Dem Boys Seh’ columns and news reports about the targeting of the paper.
Sattaur, through an Ex-Parte application filed by the firm Satram and Satram, also managed to secure an interim injunction retraining publisher Glenn Lall, editor Adam Harris and the National Media and Publishing Company Limited—named as the defendants in the action—from further writing, printing, publishing or circulating the alleged defamatory words contained in editions published between August 31 and September 23.
Sattaur contends that after he initiated an investigation into the importation of two vehicles by remigrants Narootandeo and Gharbassi Brijnanan that resulted in the seizure of the two vehicles, Lall, Harris and the newspaper began a campaign to “defame, malign, degrade and humiliate” him in the performance of his duties as Commissioner-General and in his personal life.
He asked for the injunction out of fear that the newspaper would continue to be used to defame him.
Justice Sandra Kurtzious granted the injunction and an in-chambers hearing is set for October 14 on Sattaur’s application and whether the injunction would be continued until the hearing and determination of the action.
In his endorsement of claim, Sattaur says that the columns and reports published in the Kaieteur News Newspaper are intended to destroy his character and to humiliate him “in the national and international public as a corrupt, spiteful and incompetent officer who uses his public office as an instrument of harassment against an innocent public.”
“The several publications pleaded herein were deliberately calculated and intended to harm me by using the newspaper as the instrument of defamatory mischief against a public officer with no corresponding power,” he claims.
“The publications have caused me harm and distress of the utmost severity. I have been greatly injured and disparaged in my character and reputation and my position as Commissioner General of the Authority and have been brought into public ridicule, odium and contempt. The distress and humiliation has been enormous and will continue to be felt for the foreseeable future. I have been lowered in the estimation of right thinking members of society and have suffered egregious injury,” he adds.
Sattaur previously said that the seizure of the vehicles belonging to the Brijnanans—close friends of Lall—was part of a wider investigation into the misuse of vehicles imported by remigrants that began since the start of the year under the auspices of the Auditor General’s Office. Lall, however, has maintained that the seizure of the vehicles, which had been used by him and his wife, were part of the persecution of his newspaper over its exposés of government corruption and wrongdoing, including questionable tax concessions granted by the GRA.
Following Kaieteur News’ publication of what appeared to be an email exchange between Sattaur and Attorney-General Anil Nandlall discussing actions to be taken against the Kaieteur News, Sattaur faced a call by the AFC earlier this week for his removal and a thorough investigation of the revelations of the targeting of the independent media by the GRA, seemingly under the direction of external forces.
