GRA and flexibility

May 30, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Guyana Revenue Authority is a master of political diversion. Faced with a slew of allegations about its operations, including its policy of flexibility towards the importation of motor vehicles for its senior officers, the GRA is now on the path to breaking what is being alleged to be a ring of corruption in relation to heavy duty equipment and vehicles which were granted temporary importation status from neighbouring states.
These actions, however, will not conceal the fact that the GRA has found itself in a deep mess. It is a mess which has been of its own creation for the past two years.
It was a representative of the Board of Directors who one year ago made an announcement of a shake-up within the GRA, involving the unexplained sending home of three persons from the Authority. One person who benefitted from accelerated promotion as a result of that shake-up has himself now being shaken-up by a controversy which has erupted over the importation of a duty free vehicle.
We are told that the GRA Board will eventually say something about this matter, quite a departure from its previous record when it took the high road of placing persons on the breadline without so much as an explanation to those persons.
The source of GRA’s woes has been the removal of persons from key positions and the positioning of political appointees, some of whom are long past the retirement age, into those positions.
The present debacle which faces the GRA is a case of poetic justice. It assumed that the political hacks it appointed would improve the functioning of the system but instead the system has now become rigged of massive corruption.
The GRA has so far failed to answer the question as to who within its structure ordered the release of a high end motor vehicle which was held bearing a false number plate. Justice can only be served if the purveyor on an unlawful instruction is brought to book.
The outfitting of a vehicle with a false number plate suggests either an attempt at committing a felony or a cover-up of an existing felony. It is an offence under the law punishable by a fine and imprisonment.
Any motorist whom the police discovers bearing a false number plate is going to find himself or herself before a magistrate. But it seems as if with the right connections persons can avoid this fate by convincing the GRA to not pursue this angle. Who is it within the GRA who gave the orders for the release of the vehicle?
No one expects that the political authorities who are so fond of launching commissions of inquiry into lesser infractions are going to independently determine who gave officers of the GRA the lawful instruction to release a vehicle bearing a false number plate. Is it because the person is a politically connected and/or politically protected individual?
Now the GRA is going after vehicles brought in from Suriname and Brazil which are believed to have false number plates. The irony of the GRA’s actions is unbelievable.
The GRA must come clean. It must indicate why it is that for over two years, it took no action to ensure that the import duties for the vehicle were paid. Or was this another case of the GRA exercising its flexibility?
The GRA must be wished all success in bringing to justice all those who have evaded duties in relation to heavy duty vehicles. But those caught in the net of the present investigations must now surely have a right to demand that they be given some flexibility to settle their matters without criminal charges, just as how those bearing false number plates have been able to do so.

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