GRA accessing suspicious bank accounts

Oct 19, 2016 News

The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has been taking full advantage of the Financial Institutions (Amendment) Bill which gives it the lawful go-ahead to access all suspicious bank accounts. This was made known at a recent press conference.
Last December, the National Assembly, without the voting support of the Opposition, passed the Financial Institutions (Amendment) Bill. In addition to giving GRA the power to peek into suspicious accounts, the Bill paved the way for a relationship with the USA that allows Guyana to know the financial standing of all Guyanese citizens with bank accounts in the USA. Reciprocally, the GRA is required to send bank statements of all American citizens residing in Guyana and even Guyanese who may have ties to the USA, even by marriage.

GRA’s Commissioner-General, Godfrey Statia

Minister within the Ministry of Finance, Jaipaul Sharma, said that one of the main reasons Government sought to pass this amendment was to comply with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). He opined that the PPP opposition is “jittery” as a result of this. Sharma said that the PPP knows that SARU will be able to access information about the USA accounts of its cohorts, something that is “hard to do otherwise.”
At Monday’s press conference, GRA’s Commissioner-General, Godfrey Statia said that Guyana had arrangements to get access to information from USA before. “We had this years now, but we have been using the wrong process to get it, but that has been corrected and we are able to do it the right way now.”
Also, asked specifically about the accessing of local suspicious accounts, Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan said that since the passing of the Financial Institutions (Amendment) Bill, “Guyana has been making use of it (the provisions of the Bill).”

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