FOLLOWING an advertisement inviting bids for the purchase of an unclaimed container of alcoholic beverages, the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) says that the highest bid was provided by a prominent beverage company.The beverage company provided the highest bid in the sum of $35,960,000.
An advertisement captioned “Sale of Liquor” was published during the period October 31-November 4, 2015 inviting bids to purchase a quantity of alcohol.
GRA received a total of twenty-one bids. These were subsequently opened on November 5.
The GRA noted that the agency was confident that based on the reputation of the beverage company the payment documents for the alcohol beverages will not be recycled.
In the advertisement, the GRA noted that the sale was done in accordance with Section 225 of the Customs Act and in the absence of a claim. It offered no information on who the consignee might have been. The GRA notice had said that prospective bidders should be free of all tax liabilities and also present their personal identification.
Among the items in the container were 739 cases of Absolut Vodka, 49 cases of Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky, 25 cases of Johnnie Walker Double Black, 25 cases of Hennessy, 50 cases of Coffee Patron, 100 cases of Jagermeister SE and 99 cases of Tequila.
Last May, the GRA said that it was peeved at the disappearance of approximately $6M worth of foreign liquor from its Eccles Warehouse Facility.
This discovery was made by officers of the agency’s Law Enforcement and Investigation Division (LEID) during a routine inventory exercise, which led to the immediate launching of an investigation on May 13, 2015.
As a result of the discovery, surveillance footage was reviewed and this revealed that officers of the security firm contracted to provide 24-hour security to the warehouse were very much involved, the tax agency said.
“In light of this the GRA has since provided copies of the recording to the management of the private security firm and has indicated to them that they are being held culpable. Additionally, the matter has been reported to the Guyana Police Force (GPF) for further investigation and the subsequent institution of criminal charges,” the tax agency had stated.
Commissioner General of the GRA Khurshid Sattaur had assured that the agency would spare no effort bringing the perpetrators to justice.
He noted that the agency had previously installed a Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) monitoring system to safeguard against such incidents and this had significantly aided the investigation.
