SARA seeking to curb gold smuggling
-has been getting help from Brazil, looking at huge Curacao heist
With an estimated 30 per cent of Guyana’s raw gold being smuggled out of the country, Director of the State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA), Dr Clive Thomas says efforts are being made to not only plug the leak, but to have as much as possible of the precious metal returned.
“Contact with neighbours to whom most of the smuggled gold goes were initiated and we started negotiations about the recovery of that,” Thomas said in a recent interview with Stabroek News. He informed that the agency has made great strides with Brazil, though he added that the recent elections and change of government in that country has resulted in further discussions being stalled.
Since it entered office in 2015, the APNU+AFC administration has contended that large amounts of gold are being smuggled out of the country. However, there has been little evidence of success in intercepting these illicit shipments.
Attorney General Basil Williams, during his budget presentation earlier this month, informed the House about the existing arrangement between the two countries.
“SARA is presently seeking cooperation with Brazil to identify and if possible, recover gold held in Brazil due to illegal activities by Guyanese smugglers,” he said in giving an overview of the work being done by the agency.
He had stressed that the agency is working with the Ministries of Legal and Foreign Affairs’ to recover revenue lost through gold shipments leaving Guyana. He said too that there have been several cases where amounts declared at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri were vastly different to what was declared at the JFK Airport in New York.
Sounding hopeful, Thomas said that the agency is waiting to see whether the new Brazilian government will continue to support Guyana in its quest. He reiterated that before now, “we were getting extremely good support.”
He said that it is not known how much of the 30 per cent of the gold believed to be smuggled is ending up in Brazil. “It is a significant proportion because it is a transit point,” he said, adding that a large portion also goes to Venezuela, but with the collapse of that economy, “a lot of that has been tightened up.” Another destination is Suriname, according to Thomas who said that previous discussions were held with authorities there.
The SARA director had earlier explained that as a result of the National Risk Assessment which was undertaken in 2016, a report was prepared and there was consultation on it. He said in that report, certain critical areas of weakness in protecting the economy and the financial system were identified. The gold sector, he said, was highlighted as a “key sector that needed special arrangement.”
“The risk that we identified was that there was a lot of leakage of gold being smuggled out of the country. That the declaration represented about 70 per cent of the total gold produced. So there is a significant leakage… about 30 per cent is the semiofficial estimate in the sense that most people who write in the sector use that figure of 70 per cent being declared and 30 per cent being smuggled out,” he said.
The SARA director pointed out that monthly meetings are held with various agencies including the Guyana Revenue Authority, the Securities Council, the Lands and Surveys Commission, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, and the Gold Board, in an attempt to find ways to bring about a reduction of this risk.
Significant
Noting that the smuggled figure represents a “significant amount of money,” Thomas explained that the US, prior to the commencement of the risk assessment, had conducted a study which discovered that there was a significant weekly and monthly haemorrhaging of gold from Guyana.
Thomas pointed out that according to US law, it is not illegal to import raw gold but what the authorities there did was to track how much of it was coming from Guyana. “We benefited from that because it is also linked to terrorist financing. Most of the financing of the terrorist activities around the world use the medium of gold, just like how they use other mediums… that cannot be easily traced…they try to use instruments that are readily sold …” he stressed.
Deputy Director Aubrey HeathRetemyer said that the variance at JFK was “significant enough” to attract the attention of both the US authorities and law enforcement officials here. He could not say how many such cases have been detected. “…we felt that any such discrepancy can be portrayed to a loss on our part,” he said.
Heath-Retemyer later emphasised that the gold is being smuggled through the country’s “very” porous border. “The mere fact is that people can get across the land border easily through the Lethem area and other parts of the South Rupununi. We lose a lot of gold through that area,” he said.
Both officials insisted that the agency is collaborating with several agencies to put a dent in gold smuggling. “We are trying to tighten up the screws on that area…passage of the undeclared gold out of Guyana. We are looking at that every carefully,” Heath-Retemyer stressed.
Curaçao gold
Meanwhile, SARA is also looking at the theft of 476 pounds of gold believed to have originated from Guyana, from a ship in Curaçao in 2012.
Heath-Retemyer informed that the agency is “getting support” from the officials on the island with respect to that matter. Speaking about the length of time that has elapsed, he said that at the time the agency was formed, it was not envisioned that it would have the humongous task it is faced with now. “These things are slow and painful,” he stressed while adding that there are international agreements which provide for bilateral and multi-lateral arrangements in seeking to recover Guyana’s assets.
Thomas, in speaking on this issue, said that SARA began looking at the matter in 2016 after word came from the “street” that the bars of gold were “recognised” as originating from Guyana.
“…being an agency concerned with civil recovery, our focus has been on trying to recover that gold for Guyana because we figure that it would be a substantial amount and the countries we have spoken to so far have indicated a willingness, once the gold is identified as Guyanese, to support us in getting repatriation of it,” he stressed.
The gold worth approximately US$11.5 million was stolen from a Guyanese fishing boat, Summer Bliss.
News agency Amigoe had reported that six men carrying guns, wearing masks and hoodies along with police jackets, stormed the boat. At gunpoint, they pushed the 51year-old captain as well as the three Guyanese crewmen onto the ground. The robbers knew their way around the vessel as they walked directly to the three metal boxes with the gold bars and spent only five minutes removing them.
It was suspected that the gold stolen in Curaçao was smuggled to Suriname in batches from Guyana over a period of time, after which it was melted into gold bars, loaded in the Summer Bliss and transported to the neighbouring country. Another theory is that they were loaded into a vessel right in Guyana before it set sail.
Based on the information this newspaper received, the vessel was on its way to Miami but made a stop in Curaçao.