The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) came in for questioning yesterday for its handling of the reported disappearance and return of two vehicles from a private warehouse where they were being stored, without any clearance from customs.
The 2015 Report of the Auditor General (AG) on the GRA’s Customs and Trade Administration showed several instances where vehicles and equipment were removed from warehouses without first being cleared by Customs and without duties and taxes being paid. These cases were documented in the AG’s report, but particular emphasis was placed yesterday by the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on an incident in 2016, where there may have been an attempt to cover up discrepancies between the vehicles listed on a warehouse’s register and the vehicles actually present on site by having the vehicles returned to the warehouse before the audit office conducted a second inspection.
It was found during yesterday’s meeting that when the AG’s office visited the Car Care warehouse in April, 2016, two vehicles listed in the register could not be accounted for. Those vehicles had reportedly not been cleared by the administration to leave the warehouse, nor had duties and taxes been paid on them.
About two weeks later, however, upon a subsequent visit made by the AG’s office, those very vehicles were found at the warehouse. The report stated that the position of the vehicles observed in the first visit had changed.
The AG confirmed yesterday that a representative from GRA was present at the site visit on both visits.
The AG’s report states that the warehouse operator, after being informed of the allegation, denied that the warehouse had been inappropriately accessed and that the vehicles had been removed.
GRA’s Deputy Commissioner of Customs Patrick Hyman told members of the PAC yesterday that the warehouse operator was not sanctioned, but was advised that should there be any other incidents, their licence would be revoked.
In explaining why no action had been taken against the owner of the warehouse, he related that it was because the vehicles had been at the warehouse the next day when officers went to “secure” the location.
He could not state if the GRA officer that had been present during the AG’s inspection was among the team that returned the following day.
“…What is happening here is that the AG is verifying that the officer of GRA knew the cars were missing when they went. So somebody must have informed somebody that, ‘listen, this car gotta go back there tomorrow.’ The car just can’t reappear the next day, unless you are denying your officer at GRA, that when they went they didn’t see right and the car was indeed there. It can’t be both, it has to be one of the two,” Chairman of the PAC Irfaan Ali stated.
Hyman also pointed out that the warehouse operator had denied the allegations, prompting the following response from PAC member Juan Edghill: “…The warehouse owner denies the occurrence. This is putting the integrity of the audit office under question as against the warehouse owner. The verification to determine who was right and who was wrong has to do with the authority that was responsible for restricting the movement of vehicles from the warehouse, and that is GRA.
“The Auditor General shows up at a warehouse, two cars are missing. At minimum, GRA is supposed to take possession and secure that warehouse immediately, and to conduct an internal audit to find out what is going on. Not the next day, immediately… How are we to know that these cars were not used in the commission of a crime? With fake number plates? How are we to know that? The GRA has a specific responsibility.” Edghill added that the answers being provided to the committee were inadequate.
Hyman committed to provide the PAC with a full report on the officer that attended the audit inspection, along with information such as why he did not report the incident of the missing vehicles as was expected of him and what steps will be taken going forward.
Thus far, the only action taken in relation to the matter was remedial work one on a column of the warehouse gate, at the expense of the owner to “restrict unauthorized access.”
Ali had suggested that as a criteria, owners be made to have security cameras installed in their warehouses.
The AG’s report had also reported on five different warehouses where equipment and vehicles were removed without release from the administration.
In one instance, 36 pieces of equipment and 17 vehicles carrying a value of $370.859 million could not be located in five warehouses operated by one importer, and there was no evidence of the items being cleared. In this case, duties and taxes totalling $89.691 million were not recorded as being paid.
In another instance, the report said that 44 pieces of equipment valued at $312.006 million with payable taxes of $49.921 million were removed from four warehouses and transferred to another four without the Commissioner-General’s permission.
Hyman related that these figures were cumulative and represented their clients over a period starting from 2013. Since the report, he said GRA has managed to collect taxes on 26 pieces of equipment totaling $23.8 million, has found documentation for 22 which were duty-free, and has found records of registration for 16 pieces, among other developments.
He added that the licences for these warehouses referenced above have since been revoked and so no they longer have permission to operate.
