A move to bring a criminal charge against on-leave Ministry of the Presidency Permanent Secretary Omar Shariff and a woman was yesterday aborted after the special prosecutor assigned to the matter discovered issues with the case file.
Special prosecutor Patrice Henry and Superintendent Robert Tyndall, who is an officer attached to the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU), asked the court not to proceed with the charge that was about to be read to Shariff and the woman by Georgetown Magistrate Fabayo Azore.
The charge that was to be read to Shariff was for failure to comply with a production order.
As the magistrate called upon Shariff to stand before the court, Tyndall and Henry interrupted and asked for the matter to be recalled at another time. When asked by Azore about the reason for the delay, the prosecutor told the court that after perusing the file they had found some issues in the document. He further said that he will have to seek further legal advice to clarify certain issues in order to move forward.
Magistrate Azore adjourned the matter until January 23.
Shariff had been sent on annual leave from July 1, 2016 by Minister of State Joseph Harmon, following investigations that were launched by SOCU.
Harmon had said Shariff was sent on leave to facilitate the ongoing investigation into the acquisition of his personal assets and accounts. Although he refused to comment on the recent revelations in the media, citing the fact that the investigation is still active, a Ministry of the Presidency statement reported him as saying that the exorbitant accumulation of property and wealth, which cannot be justified by income by any public servant, regardless of their position in the administration, would raise questions.
Shariff, in a statement, had said that SOCU had launched an investigation into a personal matter related to tax remittance and compliance regarding his legitimate business operations over the past few years and pointed out that his business and the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) have been in engagement on the issue since early 2007.
“As far as I am aware, there is no connection to any real or perceived corruption and missing government monies or any such thing in relation to him,” Shariff’s lawyer, Sanjeev Datadin, had told this publication.
Questioned last year by Stabroek News as to the billions reportedly held by Shariff, a source close to him had said that the figure represents the total amount of funds that had passed through his accounts over a period of time for specified transactions and rubbished claims that any of the accounts’ balances were in the billions or even hundreds of millions.
“They are totalling monies passing though his account. It is not at a given time he has a $1 billion or $10 billion. It is for periods, say two years or three years and if that is so, he will have that amount passing through the account,” the source said.
“Billions? What Billions? There is no billions. He has $2 million in shares that he bought… He is one of the largest distributors and sellers of phone card and minutes in Guyana, for both telephone companies, maybe the second largest agent/distributor… and has been doing this job for the past 15 years. He has a $30 million credit facility with GTT and he would buy, say $20 million at one time… Every time he sells a $5 million it goes into the bank. So, it is a constant flow of money every single day of millions going through his accounts but the money goes back to GTT… He buys credit from Airtime, the company that sells for Digicel for that credit,” the source explained.
The source said Shariff’s only issues relate to taxes and that soon will be rectified with the GRA. “Since 2007, when they brought out phone card and minutes, it was always an issue with GRA whether phone cards and minutes were VAT-able… They have never been able to record it … There are documents to show this and it has never been resolved over the years. So, he submits all his accounts to GRA but what he has not been doing is remitting VAT and because they can’t say if it is VAT-able or not, that has an impact on his income tax… If you pay VAT, you make less money, less of the money is yours… VAT has been outstanding for him for the last 10 years and everyone knows that,” the source stated.
