During the period immediately following the disclosure of the alleged Fidelity/Customs fraud both the President and the Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority conceded that the Customs Department was no stranger to corrupt practices. Of course, the widespread public belief that such practices do not simply exist, but flourish, hardly needed confirmation by the President and the Commissioner General.
These practices which are believed to range from the ‘speeding up’ of clearance procedures in exchange for ‘a consideration’ to the complete or partial evasion of Customs Duties in exchange for appreciably larger kickbacks appear to have survived successive Customs administrators, incremental improvements in operational checks and balances and frequent investigations into alleged malpractices. Indeed, the perception that the Customs Department is a place where there is money to be made ‘on the side’ has become so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness that the authorities no longer bother to seriously deny that these practices are real.
It is the belief that there have been instances of major malpractices at Customs that led the President to announce a few months ago that a wide-ranging investigation into the Customs Department would include an investigation of bank accounts. The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this presidential pronouncement is that functionaries at Customs may have been able to considerably enrich themselves by means that go beyond their earned incomes.
If it is that we have arrived at a stage of seeking to catch and punish the perpetrators rather than continually deny that the problem exists then that is at least a step forward since, whatever arguments the authorities may seek to muster to the contrary, the compelling feeling, backed in many cases by persuasive evidence, that there is a high level of corruption within Customs is now well nigh impossible to dismiss from the collective public mind.
The problem with any official commitment to a thorough probe of Customs, however, is the same as it has been for decades. Precedent has bred a deep-seated public cynicism about the real intention of the authorities and that cynicism is rooted in a series of probes going back several years that have not, it seems, unveiled the real magnitude of the rackets. What is needed is a probe that seeks, once and for all, to bring an end to public cynicism.
No one is suggesting that corrupt practices within Customs Departments are unique to Guyana. Customs officials the world over have immense powers of discretion, rules and regulations notwithstanding and those powers are often converted into considerable gain, for themselves and for importers. The universality of the practice, however, does nothing to assuage the public feeling frustration that here in Guyana huge amounts of money that could otherwise be used for the public good are diverted from the consolidated fund.
There are some common assumptions that attend public perceptions of Customs Officers including in some cases, the assumption that their material acquisitions will grow much more rapidly than those of other public officers loosely described as ‘the average public servant;’ and the suspicion that once you are a Customs Officer you are compromised in one way or another. This is grossly unfair to those whom, the Commissioner General insists, are concerned only with doing their jobs efficiently.
Then there are things about the suspicion of endemic corruption that hang over the operations of Customs that are, to say the least, mind-boggling. Like the fact, apparently, well-organized ‘scams’ – like the alleged Customs/Fidelity fraud -involving millions of dollars, can actually proceed over protracted periods without – it appears – coming to the attention of those in authority; and the fact that on those occasions when these practices do eventually come to light, the guilty parties are invariably deemed to be a handful of relatively junior functionaries whom, you would think, are hardly well-positioned to perpetrate such scams without help from their better-positioned colleagues.
And when the public disclosures are made about the outcomes of enquiries that result in the dismissal of an accounts clerk whose only job is to write receipts, public cynicism deepens and whatever the extent of their guilt or otherwise, they come to be regarded as scapegoats.
There are other allegations about Customs too like those that suggest collusion between Customs functionaries and businessmen; like the allegation that there are practices designed to manipulate the supply of particular commodities on the market by staggering the release of separate consignments of a particular commodity – the same commodity -from the same container so that the consignee whose consignment is released first enjoys a temporary market advantage.
There are probably no ‘quick fix’ solutions to the challenge of removing the stain that hangs over the Customs Department. Customs, by its very nature, is an institution where, the sheer volume and value of the goods administered every day and the latitude afforded the officials who administer those transactions can easily give rise to the practice of illegal ‘favours’ in exchange for rewards which is simply a kinder way of describing a culture of corruption. And while, realistically, such practices may be difficult – perhaps even impossible – to suppress, too often, one gets the impression that not a great deal is being done to limit the comfort zone in which these corrupt appear to thrive.
