Staff who disappeared with takings reported to the Police
The Guyana Revenue Authority has reported the incident which occurred on January 5 involving a staff who failed to deposit the full daily takings in the Authority’s account. A supervisor of GRA’s Revenue Accounting Department became suspicious when the staff who took the January 4 takings to the Bank of Guyana did not return within reasonable time. After numerous calls to the employee’s mobile phone were not answered the supervisor went to the bank where he discovered that a sum of $976,000 was not deposited.

When other attempts to contact the staff proved futile, the incident was reported to the Brickdam Police Station. The staff has not reported for work since and he has not made any contact with the GRA.

The Guyana Revenue Authority has already instituted charges against two staff who were involved in the $300M fraud which occurred last year. The High Court recently allowed a reduction in the $1M bail on which one of the accused was placed and also granted permission for the person to leave the country. The other accused has fled the jurisdiction.

Since this fraud, GRA has strengthened controls in its revenue accounting systems to detect and prevent breach of procedure and fraud. Supervision of junior staff has been enhanced and greater emphasis is now placed on verification of source documents and cashier reports.

The frequency and scope of audits done by the Internal Audit Division have been increased to capture more transactions within shorter intervals. Despite all of these efforts however, the Commissioner General expressed disgust with the occurrence of these incidents.

“There would be increased emphasis on integrity, professionalism and honesty of the staff of the organisation and this has to start from the point of recruitment” Mr. Sattaur said. He emphasized the role of the Integrity Committee launched in December 2009 in achieving this objective.
The entity has been stern in dealing with employees implicated in frauds. Once a person is found culpable they are charged and dismissed from the job.