In what is being seen a bizzare move, Former Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Khurshid Sattaur on Monday morning dropped the safe belonging to the Revenue Authority to the Auditor General’s Office, High Street Kingston. When the Guyana Chronicle arrived on the scene just before noon, the open safe was sitting in the compound of the High Street office under watch by a security guard and staff of the entity. Workers of the GRA were seen peeping through their windows in anticipation of officials of the Revenue Authority collecting the safe.

“He drop it off at around 10:30 time. He didn’t spend long; just where you see it is where he drop it off,” an eyewitness told this publication.
GRA’s Chairman, Rawle Lucas in an invited comment could not provide a reason why Sattaur took the safe to the Auditor General’s office. “I am aware,” was the response provided when asked to confirm that the safe was indeed delivered to the AG’s.
“The safe should have been brought to GRA…the proper thing to do was to bring it to the GRA and not the AG’s office,” Lucas told Guyana Chronicle.
“I don’t know why the former Commissioner General would take it there,” he remarked. The Revenue Authority Chairman said he has no idea what the contents of the safe were, noting that the safe was in Sattaur’s possession for a number of years.
“I have no idea as to what the contents of the safe were when it went missing,” he said in answering questions on the integrity of the data stored in the safe. He said one has to be cautious when addressing the integrity of the data stored in the safe as there is no certainty about what it contained when it went missing.
However, notwithstanding the issues surrounding the return of the safe, it is in safe keeping at the Revenue Authority. “As soon as we learned it was taken to the Auditor General’s office, staff was sent over and they collected it…it is now stored as property of the GRA.”
Last week, at a press briefing Lucas revealed that Sattaur was fired from the Authority because he disclosed tax payers’ information and stored GRA’s data at his home in a safe. Sattaur, according to the board admitted to breaching his oath of office just one month prior to the May 2015 General Elections by disclosing a taxpayer’s information to another without authorisation.
“The board learnt that approximately one month before the May 2015 elections Mr. Sattaur divulged sensitive information of a Guyanese tax payer to a person who was not authorized to receive such information,” said Lucas last Friday.
The board, through its investigation concluded that the “transaction had no benefit to the people of Guyana and only for Mr Sattaur himself.”
Speaking specifically to the safe, the GRA Chair said, “The safe was supposed to be under the control of the head of the Information and technology division of the GRA but was found to be at Mr Sattaur’s residence. The safe was normally used for storing confidential tax payers’ data.”
Sattaur had told the board that the safe was lodged at his house because his son, an employee of GRA at the time, worked in the IT department.
However, Sattaur in defence issued a statement to the media refuting the statements made by Lucas. He said that GRA’s data was required to be stored at a safe place offsite. According to GRA’s former head, his house was chosen because his son was employed at the entity as a senior official and had responsibility for storing the data offsite.
“This is a situation that the previous board and government did not find offensive and distrustful, as a temporary measure,” he noted. Sattaur explained that the storage of data at his house was abandoned approximately five years ago.
“The use of the safe was discontinued years ago when a new back-up site was created at another location, but the safe continued to remain at my home to store my GRA weapon and ammunition up until recently,” Mr Sattaur said in the statement.

By Ariana Gordon