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ATV duty free letters…Three GRA Enforcement officials interdicted

Sep 25, 2012 News

 

 

Three officials of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), who have been fingered in allegations of bribery during the seizures of two All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs), have been interdicted from duty pending an investigation.
According to GRA officials, the three were all from the Enforcement Unit. They were identified by a businesswoman as allegedly being the officers who took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes for helping her to acquire duty free letters on a number of ATVs.
They were sent home on Friday.
The matter reached the Office of the President.
Last week, the Kuru Kururu businesswoman, Marsha Chase, and her lawyer blasted GRA for its handling of investigations. Police had attempted to arrest Chase while she was said to have been at Kaieteur News.
The businesswoman was reportedly asked to pay in excess of $8M in duties and fines for importing a number of the ATVs.
Chase had alleged that she paid GRA officers for the duty free letters for the bikes and had fingered at least one of them. She offered to give evidence. Instead she was sent a demand notice to pay over $8M.
Under regulations, miners are entitled to duty free concessions on the ATVs which are a popular means of transport in especially the mining areas and other hinterland communities.
The woman had said that one GRA officer told her that she could import the bikes using the concession letters.
Chase said that before the letters, she would pay over $1.7M in duty for each bike.
However, the officers allegedly made her hand over up to $600,000 for the duty free letters.
The matter came to light in August after GRA’s law enforcement arm stopped a Canter carrying two of the bikes which she had sold. According to the GRA, Chase was called in after investigators seized the bikes.
She later gave a statement and identified one of the officers.
Her lawyer, Manoj Narayan, said that it was sad that GRA, despite inviting citizens to come forward and identify its corrupt officers, had chosen instead to penalize her with hefty fines.
The woman had been prepared to testify.
GRA had come out in a statement criticizing the woman and her lawyer.
This is not the first time that there have been allegations of wrongdoing over duty free concessions and the importations of ATVs.
Earlier this year, GRA admitted that it was probing incidents where concessions were granted. It is believed that over $100M was diverted from the government coffers. There were no findings released for that probe.

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