GRA and its analysis of media houses

In a press release on Thursday, the Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Mr Khurshid Sattaur has acknowledged that the GRA had compiled information on an initial analysis of the income of media houses for the purposes of an audit of the Kaieteur News. This acknowledgment by Mr Sattaur is important in the context of the allegations that have been levelled against him and the GRA in recent days by KN, to wit that there was a plot against the newspaper and that the income information had been requested by former President Jagdeo and was later the subject of another email exchange between Mr Sattaur and the Attorney General Mr Nandlall.

Given the heavy politicisation of autonomous and semi-autonomous agencies and interference with them by the government, the planned audit of Kaieteur News by the GRA must raise skepticism in the mind of thinking persons. It is left to be seen how the GRA conducts itself in this audit and whether it will be able to convince the public of the propriety of its intervention. The vast powers of the GRA as pointed out by our Sunday columnist Mr Rawle Lucas in yesterday’s edition must be carefully and judiciously applied.

What is however even more disconcerting and needs further investigating is the allegation that the genesis of the supposed GRA analysis was at the behest of former President Jagdeo. KN has published what it says are emails of three-way correspondence among Messrs Sattaur, Jagdeo and Nandlall.

In the GRA’s press release of Thursday, Mr Sattaur, while acknowledging that an analysis of newspaper income had been done, then proceeded to label the purported email correspondence as fabricated. Mr. Jagdeo has thus far said nothing on them and Mr Nandlall has not been expansive on the issue and in his case there is also the jarring assertion by the newspaper that a vehicle assigned to his office had done surveillance work on KN in respect of a vehicle parked outside of its premises. It would obviously be in Mr Sattaur’s interest to deny the existence of the emails, so clearly some other means needs to be found to establish whether these emails were indeed transmitted. It would appear from reports that several of the figures on the media houses in the correspondence are accurate. Stabroek News’ figures have always been publicly available but that has not been the case for other newspapers so a compiling of these figures in one document could very well point in the direction of the GRA as the source of the information. There is enough now in the public domain and knowledge of how the PPP government and its lieutenants work to warrant a closer examination of this purported correspondence.

Given all that is known of the dark arts of Mr Jagdeo’s governance of this country for 12 years, nothing should be put past him. He has shown a ruthless streak in pursuing and sidelining those he believes to be opponents or in the way of his grand plans. In 2006, he embarked on a campaign intended to close Stabroek News by cutting off state advertising. The instruction for the ads to cease was delivered from within the Office of the President and coincided with the then inchoate plans for the establishment of the Guyana Times, part of the present stable of the much favoured Ramroop group. This is the most direct evidence of the diabolic plans of Mr Jagdeo as it is well known that in the latter years of his presidency no decision such as the cutting off of ads could be taken without his imprimatur.

It would not be far-fetched for Mr Jagdeo to have made the request for the information from the GRA with ulterior motives afoot. Neither would it have been far-fetched for the GRA to acquiesce. The GRA was invented by Mr Jagdeo’s government, paving the way for the fusing of the Customs and Excise Department and the Inland Revenue Department. No agency under the Jagdeo administration and its successor, whether autonomous or not, had/has been known to exercise independence of mind when dealing with the executive, particularly Mr Jagdeo’s. You either toe the line or you are out. One of the last known attempts to stand up to the Jagdeo administration over the export of wildlife from the Office of the President resulted in former Auditor General Mr Anand Goolsarran quitting his position.

To ask the governing board of the GRA to determine whether there had been any breach in confidentiality or any improper request by Mr Jagdeo to the GRA would be a completely futile exercise. So, too, would be any approach to the government. It would be the Polar beer scam all over again.

Determining the authenticity of emails and their provenance are extremely difficult undertakings as evidenced by the scandal in Trinidad and Tobago which ironically also related to the alleged targeting of independent media in the twin island republic by the government. Months have expired and the government is still battling to try to clear its name and to elicit information from Google on the strength of court orders. It is still unclear what level of veracity of the emails can be established in this Trinidad case and what the final outcome will be. Given, however, the importance of the issue at stake and whether information had been improperly requested and exchanged at high levels it may be an appropriate exercise for the Economic Services Committee of Parliament to address the matter in the interest of underlining the sanctity of tax information in the possession of the GRA and the inviolability of the confidences shared with it. The autonomous nature of the GRA should proscribe any possibility of an out-of-office leader and a senior figure in the government conferring on confidential information for improper purposes.

There are other oddities in Mr Sattaur’s press release of Thursday that are worthy of comment. He seems to have formed the view that the information publicised by KN had been corruptly obtained. Were that the case he should be rightly aggrieved. Any bribery or hacking to obtain confidential information is exceptionable and must be roundly condemned. It would at the least mean that within the GRA there remains a serious corruption problem which the revenue agency and Mr Sattaur have tried to industriously play down.

There is however another possibility i.e. there are persons who are conscientious citizens and recognise when unjust acts are being committed by powerful people against persons in society. These citizens are then prepared to pass information to those who can right injustices. This, of course, is the basis for whistleblower legislation which progressive societies should entrench in their anti-corruption arsenal. Sadly, on top of the non-functioning Office of the Commissioner of Information, the country has no whistleblower legislation. It is yet another example of how far removed Guyana is from being held up to exacting international standards.

While Mr Sattaur is quite ready to call in the police to address the origins of confidential information in KN he did not seem similarly perturbed by reportage in the Guyana Chronicle pertaining to the same case which is now part of a seeming larger investigation against Kaieteur News. More evidence perhaps of the special relationship among state agencies.

All of this swirls around the Presidency of Mr Ramotar and he continues to disappoint and lend further substance to the concerns that former President Jagdeo and others wield unacceptable influence in the administration.