CJ orders GEA, GRA to pay $12.5M storage costs for illegally detained fuel

Mar 17, 2021 News

Dr. Richard Van West Charles of Atlantic Fuels Inc. (AFI).

Kaieteur News – Chief Justice (Ag), Roxane George-Wiltshire, on Monday ordered Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) to pay $12,825,000 for fuel illegally detained from Atlantic Fuels Inc. (AFI), a company owned by Dr. Richard Van West Charles, former Head of the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI).
The order relates to the payment of hefty storage costs which AFI owed to the ‘Falls’ gas station facility, owned by China Zhonghao Inc., at Land of Canaan, EBD. AFI had sought a declaration of the Court for the cost for storing the detained fuel, be covered by Statia and Sharma.
As such, the order states that Godfrey Statia, Commissioner General of GRA and Mahender Sharma, the Chief Executive Officer of the GEA being liable for the storage costs of the fuel belonging to Atlantic Fuels Inc. to pay the amount in full on or before March 29, 2021.
The Chief Justice (CJ) further ordered that for every additional day that the fuel is held, the sum of $113,500 is to be paid. The Chief Justice held too that the GEA and GRA are to pay the costs of the suit filed by Van West-Charles against them.
The order follows a decision of the court last month, which saw GRA and GEA being ordered to release 631,184.9 litres of fuel, which were illegally detained from the company.
Van-West Charles’ company had sued GRA, GEA over seized and detained the diesel fuel worth over $80 M.
The fuel was imported by AFI, and seized by GRA on November 1, 2020. In an attempt to defend the seizure, lawyers Judy Stuart-Adonis and Colleen Sparman-Stephens, who represented GRA and GEA respectively, presented to the Court, an alleged false invoice used by AFI to import the fuel, which they claimed, gave the GEA and GRA wrong information on the supplier, value and quantity of the fuel.
GRA contended that the ‘full and applicable taxes could not have been determined’ and that the release of the fuel would result in ‘significant losses of revenue’ to the government.
GEA on the other hand, had told the court that Sharma had the power to refuse to mark the fuel, because the fuel was not lawfully imported and because he held the view that AFI was not the ‘true importer’ of the fuel. The Energy Agency claimed that AFI was merely facilitating the importation of the fuel for another company, ‘Clean Energy Guyana Inc.’ It claimed further that AFI acted in breach of Petroleum Regulations 2014, when it imported the fuel by way of a false declaration.
In her decision last month, the Chief Justice agreed with the contentions by Siand Dhurjon and Damien Da Silva, lawyers for Van-West Charles.
Both argued that Statia and Sharma by causing the detention of the fuel, acted in violation of his rights to protection from the deprivation of property under Article 142 of the Constitution of Guyana.
The lawyers held that because the taxes and fees were already paid, ‘it was difficult to see how revenue owed to the State could be lost,’ as contended by the State agencies.
As such, Dhurjon submitted that the GEA and GRA had no power under law to hinder or impede the importation of the fuel.

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