More Customs records of a fuel import company controlled by Dr. Richard Van West Charles, chief of the Guyana Water Authority (GWI), are indicating that a case late last year of under-invoicing to defraud the state of taxes was not an isolated one.
Altantic Fuel’s Director, Dr. Richard Van West Charles
The matter has now caught the attention of the Guyana Revenue Authority which sources say has launched an investigation.
According to additional Customs documents seen by Kaieteur News, the under-invoicing also involves fuel that Atlantic Fuels Inc. was purchasing in the free trade border area at Morawhanna, North West District, Region One.
Morawhanna is the gateway to Region One, with persons coming from Venezuela by water, expected to check in at the immigration operations there. Also there is a team of Guyana Revenue Authority officers.
For a number of years, fuel has been brought to that area and local operators would make purchases, taking it to mining locations in the hinterlands and to the coastlands.
The operators would pay taxes there.
It appears that Atlantic Fuels, like a number of other operators, have been capitalizing on the fuel there which on average cost just US$0.50 per liter, a tad cheaper than Trinidad and other places.
However, according to Customs documents, Atlantic Fuel presented GRA with a Commercial Invoice dated September 25, 2018, which used a CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) price of US$0.25, half of the normal price.
The amount of fuel was about 270,000 liters (71,326 US gallons).
Atlantic Fuel declared that the cost was US$67,500 which caused GRA to collect only $14M in taxes.
The correct taxes should have been double that amount- which is almost $28M in taxes the state has lost.
This latest disclosure comes on the heels of another shipment in September/October last year by the same company which was brought on a fuel ship, named “Century”. The shipment of 639,000 liters (170,000 US gallons) was supposed to cost US$379,100.
However, Atlantic Fuel’s director, Lear Goring, filed documents which pegged it at US$159,750.
The state reported losses of $32M in taxes because of that.
The Commercial Invoice that was tendered to GRA with the US$0.25 cost.
In Customs terms, the deliberate declaration of prices below what was actually the value or what was paid is known as under-invoicing. GRA uses the cost to assess taxes. Atlantic Fuel was controversially granted a licence in late 2015, months after the Coalition Government took office.
Van West Charles, the son-in-law of former President, Forbes Burnham, received the licence for Atlantic Fuel in just over a month from the Guyana Energy Agency.
Normally, licences take several months to be issued, because of stringent requirements, including environmental permits and time it takes to ready storage and other facilities.
Several persons have complained of the difficulties in the application process.
Fuel trade is a highly lucrative business.
It is one of the biggest earners for government, in terms of the taxes it rakes in.
However, bribery and collusion, even involving GEA staffers, have been proving a problem.
There have been complaints that while GRA has been squeezing small taxpayers, it seems to be not moving fast enough to tackle the tax evaders involved in the fuel trade.