At the Leonora Court yesterday, Magistrate Rochelle Liverpool fined an East Bank Demerara businessman $50,000 after he was found guilty of possession of illegal fuel.
The charge read that on August 5, 2013 at Uitvlugt, West Coast Demerara, Vishnu Singh, 46, of 308 Herstelling had in his possession a quantity of illegal diesel, which did not contain the marker in the specified concentration.
Magistrate Liverpool told the court that she did not impose the maximum fine because she had taken into concentration a mitigating factor that Singh was honest about how the fuel was obtained.
Singh, the owner of Vishnu Singh’s Auto Sales & Spares was summoned in October 2014 to attend court.
He had explained that the diesel was removed from a truck he had imported from England.
At the time his mechanic had put $5,000 more diesel in the tank from a Rubis gas station while taking the truck, bearing Singh’s trade plate, to his workshop at Uitvlugt.
After he got there he extracted the fuel, which amounted to eight gallons, into two five-gallon pails.
The Guyana Energy Association (GEA) subsequently visited the workshop and took possession of the diesel after testing it and saying it was illegal.
A GEA official then visited his business place and he explained to the official that when the vehicles are imported they do not come with the tanks empty.
Singh also told the official that he had more trucks in the compound with the same fuel and that he can take that as well but he did not.
After the case was completed yesterday, Singh told this newspaper that other auto sales dealers import vehicles from Japan, Germany and other countries and questioned why GEA doesn’t check their fuel and charge them as well.
