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GRA sends home Wharves’ manager

Nov 19, 2010 News

The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has terminated the services of Acting Manager of its Wharves, Dwayne Benn, following investigations into a cigarette smuggling scam.
Benn was given his letter yesterday, but retroactive to Tuesday, which ordered him to hand over all GRA’s properties, including I.D. and insurance card and his firearm.
Benn is the fourth person to lose his job over a container of counterfeit cigarettes which came in to the country earlier this year.
Earlier this week, three other persons – Randolph Jeffers, a supervisor at the Mandela Avenue warehouse of a major shipping company, Colin Moore, head of the Customs Enforcement Unit and Kester Vanhooten, from the Data Entry Processing department, also received letters sending them home.
This would bring the number of Customs officers sent home over the past weeks to nine.
The cigarette smuggling case has seen Customs entries being manipulated and employees mired in a blackmail plot against a top GRA official to have disciplinary actions rescinded.
Late last month, five of the Customs Officers were detained by police in the blackmail plot.
Last August, authorities in Suriname intercepted a container of the counterfeit cigarettes and shipped it back to Guyana.
According to reports, three of the GRA employees received information that they were soon to be given their dismissal letters. It is alleged that one of the staffers facing dismissal video-taped and also made an audio recording of a very senior GRA official.
The employee reportedly then attempted to use the recorded information to force the official to reverse the decision to fire him and his colleagues.
Instead, the GRA official reportedly contacted a senior political official and was directed to have the alleged extortionist dismissed immediately.
It is alleged that in August, a 20-foot container came into the country as cargo, with the contents listed as women’s underwear. It reportedly contained several bales of counterfeit State Express 555 cigarettes.
The container was released and taken to Moleson Creek where it was somehow allowed aboard the Suriname/Guyana ferry.
But Suriname authorities at South Drain reportedly found that the container did not have proper documentation and turned it back.
It was in the Berbice region when BASS members are reported to have held onto it and detained the driver.
Just over two weeks ago, five Customs Officers also received letters ending their services.
Three of them were fingered in a plot to evade taxes for two luxury cars.

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