I REFER to the letter authored by one Fazal Mohamood which appeared in your Thursday, December 6, 2012 edition under the title: ‘Seems there is collusion with evasion of duties for vehicles’.
You should note that this letter made some very serious libelous allegations of corruption within the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA). As Head of the agency, I deliberately refrained from providing a response as I felt that your newspaper

acted highly inappropriately and precipitously in publishing very libelous material concerning the GRA and its operations without seeking a comment from the agency. I had contemplated, at that time, seeking redress through legal action to remedy the damage that would have been done to the agency from the negative publicity as a result of the highly inaccurate and misleading references to the agency in the letter.
Mr. Editor, it would appear from the unfolding of recent events, that you were not familiar at the time of the publication of the offensive letter that the person who purportedly was the letter writer, is in fact one of the parties engaged in a family feud over land and used your newspaper letter-writer column to wage a personal vendetta against the other party under the cover of a pseudonym.
A recent report that appeared in the Kaieteur News edition of 4th January, 2013 captioned ‘Vandals caught on camera damaging vehicles as family feud escalate’ seems to suggest that there is a ruptured relationship that currently exists between the two Gafoor brothers.
In yet another development, and in a very sensational and highly provocative manner, one of the parties to the feud using the alias Fazal Gtrl-Live, and whose photograph appeared on a social network website, posted statements on Facebook suggesting that the GRA and its Head have been covering up the wrong doings and acted in collusion with a member of the Gafoor family, who it is alleged is the recipient of bogus Duty Free Concessions for SUVs and ATVs.
There is absolutely no question of the GRA’s Legal Department, on this occasion, not proceeding to have the courts address this most heinous accusation that is libelous and defamatory to the GRA and the Commissioner-General, which it would appear to once again have its genesis in an unrelenting war raged by members of two hostile households and who would appear now to spare no efforts in dragging the GRA into its personal feud using the social network, Facebook.

I would like to use this opportunity to categorically repudiate any suggestion that the GRA is a party to any of the perceived wrongs that are being perpetuated by one of the relatives against the other. It is not my intention here, to conduct a public trial or expose any of the reportedly alleged wrongdoings; suffice to say that preliminary enquiries conducted into the alleged use of bogus letters to grant duty free concessions to either of the parties to the feud cannot be substantiated at this stage.
The unauthorized sale of any duty free items also cannot be substantiated, unless concrete evidence such as copies of the sale agreement or power of attorney are provided to the agency for scrutiny.
I trust that in the future, you will choose to exercise greater care and caution when allowing negative and controversial issues concerning the GRA to be disguised as factual reporting.