Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo today said that the Government is fully behind the Guyana Revenue Authority, in its bid to get answers about $12 Billion in inflated declarations submitted by ExxonMobil and the Ramps Logistics company.

Exxon has already explained that the figure was a mistake, which has since been corrected.

However, the GRA has approached the Courts to force ExxonMobil and its partners to provide answers, since the company has not been helpful in providing answers to the authorities.

It was recently reported that Exxon and Ramps are facing similar charges over a November 2023 declaration made by Ramps on behalf of Exxon to GRA. Ramps acted as the broker for Exxon importing oil well equipment valued US$4,467,662, but declared to Customs that the equipment was valued at more than US$12.1 million.

“The effort of GRA to clarify this issue did not meet with helpful responses from Exxon. They were told that whatever the price on the invoice is, since it is a tax free, it will not result in the loss of taxes but that was not the issue. We have made it clear that if invoices are deliberately increase it will have an impact on two things: It will overstate the cost bank and two it will change the tax liabilities of the government,” the Vice President explained.

Mr. Jagdeo said the government is treating the matter seriously, adding that it is almost unbelievable that someone would think about submitting an invoice for $12B.

“I don’t know how come they came up with that, they said it is the exchange rate but I don’t know what exchange rate they could have used etc, so we will get the explanations in court, we are looking forward to get the explanations in court and we are now ensuring that before we finalize the second audit, that the GRA would go back and check all of the back invoices for the last several years,” Mr. Jagdeo noted.

Mr. Jagdeo has suggested that Auditors at the GRA use a benchmarking software which can compare prices for items against invoices submitted by the oil company. He said that way it will be easier for auditors to track whether an invoice has been inflated.

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