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GRA blames Kaieteur News for its failure to find smuggler’s boat

Jul 03, 2010 News

The Guyana Revenue Authority is blaming the Kaieteur News for its failure to locate a smuggler’s boat that disappeared from Customs Boat House a month ago.
In a release issued yesterday, the GRA suggested that the leaking of information about the missing vessel to Kaieteur News had scared off informants who could have provided leads about the boat’s whereabouts.
“After a month of the alleged disappearance of the boat from the Boat House, the GRA is forced to admit that it has since lost contact with its informant/s who would appear now to be circumspect about reporting matters of a sensitive and highly dangerous nature to the GRA for fear that such information may get into the public domain and reveal their identify.”
“The GRA is, therefore, contemplating having the matter reported to the Office of the President as to how this information leaked to the Kaieteur News, as it is of the view that there is more to the Kaieteur News’s revelation of the disappearance and sensationalist reporting of the item for the sale of newspapers.”
Editor in Chief Adam Harris described the GRA comments as nothing but hot air to hide its incompetence.
He said that the GRA seems to be back in the communist days when in the Soviet Union, no fault of the government or its department was reported.
In its statement the GRA announced that it “feels that this was a deliberate strategy employed by persons in collusion with the newspaper to jeopardize the investigation of the seizure of the boat in the first instance, for which only the persons found at the time in possession of the smuggled items and the boat were apprehended and successfully prosecuted but not the real criminals who would have employed these persons.”
“The Guyana Revenue Authority has a duty to protect the state’s revenue and the newspapers should see it as their civic duty to help rather than hinder the process.
“The Guyana Revenue Authority wishes to inform the public that it is committed to its mandate of encouraging voluntary compliance and will use every measure necessary to put an end to the corrupt practices.”
The release stated that while the GRA is doing its best to ensure its staff maintain their integrity, “there are other elements within society who are working overtime in an effort to encourage corruption.”
“These instigators of corruption are in the guise of ‘upstanding’ business owners who use every means possible, including bribery and other forms of inducement to defraud the Authority and evade taxes.
“They also seek to benefit from their engagement with various agencies and in the process malign them, much to the chagrin of the majority who are patriotic, dedicated and whose hard work and bravery goes without notice.”
Kaieteur News had reported last month that the GRA had intercepted a smuggler’s boat, which was then unloaded and taken to Customs Boat House.
The vessel vanished.

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