How many has the Tax Administration raided?
Wignall’s World
I do not know the answer, neither have I sought it out. What is known, however, is whenever the Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) utilises its legal right to secure Court permission to raid ‘noname’ businesses, entities like the JMA and the JCC hardly ever come out to bat for them.
In the case of Digicel, a very high-profile telecoms company and one well loved by Jamaicans, on the heels of the recent raid by the TAJ, the heavyweights in corporate Jamaica stepped out to condemn the raid, with many suggesting that other less intimidating tactics should have been employed.
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I am not a fan of the State using bullying tactics and, as it appears to be true that police personnel accompanying the TAJ arrived at Digicel’s HQ fully armed with assault rifles, we need to hear from the authorities in the finance ministry if this is par for the course or specifically designed to meet the level of the expected tax haul.
Off the top of my head I would hazard a guess that the police action was more in line with Jamaican police culture than any real attempt to send an ominous signal to Digicel. There are many Jamaican policemen who feel naked without their assault rifles.
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When the TAJ raided Ricky Vaz’s business establishment and it created quite a stir because Ricky is the brother of then Information Minister Daryl Vaz, I do not recall the corporate giants raising a single voice and calling for a more principled stance or less intimidation from the TAJ.
The general view is that the TAJ would only effect a sudden and unexpected raid on a business place if it has exhausted all its efforts to get relevant information and final collections of what it estimates is due.
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Others have been raided and that has flown under the radar. The cold fact is, Jamaica has one of the worst tax compliance records, and it would only follow that at the back end more stringent measures would be put in place to encourage people to pay taxes. Big businesses raking in multiples of millions would have to be the obvious targets at some point.
That said, I found it quite strange that Digicel would go to Court late in the evening to secure an injunction to stop the raid. It said that it was in full compliance with the claims of the TAJ and if so, what better way to openly display this to the TAJ and Jamaica, which loves it so much, than by allowing the TAJ to freely pore through its books and satisfy all that it was not in breach.
The TAJ has already said that it will be stepping up its activities in relation to raids. That open signal that a tougher stance generally is going to be taken is directly connected to the parlous state of the nation’s coffers.
The authorities in the Ministry of Finance need to make tax paying a more customer-friendly exercise. There are some collectorates which have woefully outgrown their size. To enter one of these ‘sweatshops’ and to literally fight to reach to the payment cashier is sheer hell.
In the interim, we need less bawling from those who have been raided and also less weapons of war by the police supporting these raids.
Jamaican politicians and Olint
In the late 1990s, then Commissioner of Police Francis Forbes added an extra arm of intelligence to the JCF by forming the Special Intelligence Unit (SIU) and placing super spy, Roderick ‘Jimmy’ McGregor, as its head.
Jimmy proceeded to tap the phones of some well-connected people in Jamaican society, among them, senior policemen, politicians and criminal dons. Up until 1999 when it was discovered and scuttled, phone calls of dons to their friends in the political hierarchy were recorded.
From documents which I have seen, it seemed that the SIU had identified a troika of dons in Jamaica, one JLP-affiliated and the two others PNP-connected as the main source handling the transshipment of South American cocaine through Jamaica to its final destination, the USA.
The JLP-affiliated don was the most powerful of the three.
One day I made contact with Jimmy and we arranged to meet at a particular drinking establishment. I arrived 20 minutes earlier, found a seat and faced the small grilled entranceway, keenly looking out for his arrival and walk through the door. Half-an-hour later it appeared to me that he wasn’t coming after all. Did he have a change of heart?
A barmaid who knew me came over to my table. She bent over and whispered, ‘There is a man at the bar asking for you.’ I looked up and saw a guy in sunshades and casual shorts. I told her thanks and directed her to send him over.
To this day he has never told me how he managed to slip so furtively inside and avoid my seeing his entrance.
It is my understanding that there are hundreds of hours of audio-taped conversations involving the dons, individually and with various politicians from the PNP and JLP. These tapes will never see the light of day for that very reason — the PNP and the JLP are equally tarred and tainted.
Which brings me to Olint.
Politicians in the PNP have denied receiving funds from Olint. That party is in power and it is not now prepared to open its books and share with us a list of its donors in the days leading up to the 2007 election.
While I would be naïve to expect the JLP to open its books, by the stance it has taken, at the very least it is indicative of an intent to come clean on Olint donations. Daryl Vaz and Sally Porteous of the JLP have admitted that they received funds at the time when Olint was ‘legal’ in Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) and still doing business through Jamaican financial institutions.
To the PNP and the JLP nothing had come forward in 2007 to suggest that Olint was anything near what it eventually turned out to be, a grand Ponzi scheme.
So, it is 2007 and both political parties are free to coax Olint’s principal, David Smith.
Two years later, one PNP politician told us that the party got US$200,000. Today, there is a revision and that US$200,000 never did exist, that is, if the cow will jump over the moon.
Five years later, Smith is in prison and the JLP is checking to determine whether it really received the US$5-million from Olint which an April 2012 TCI Confiscation Order said it did. The PNP, said to receive in excess of US$3 million between party central and its affiliates and emissaries, has grown eerily silent, with thoughts of Trafigura haunting it.
It has to be stated that the monies mentioned in the TCI Confiscation Order relate to matters which occurred after Olint had relocated to the TCI. “It wasn’t fully up and running immediately after he landed in TCI,” said an insider to me recently. Apparently Smith took some time to sort out the ‘operations’ in the TCI.
So, all the monies would have a natural timeline to late 2007 and beyond.
I am making that point to say that if Smith had donated any — ultimately declared to be so — funds to the JLP and the PNP, those would not be recorded on the TCI Order.
Is it possible that when the PNP politician who admitted in 2009 that his party had received US$200,000 from Olint, he is referring to funds received before the disbursement of those funds mentioned in the TCI Confiscation Order?
Quite apart from the fact that a politician’s word, at best, must be taken to mean the exact opposite, it does appear to be that Olint donated to both the JLP and the PNP, but not all of these funds are covered in the Confiscation Order.
Which of the political parties had a funding arm called Communication 2007?
Can Communication 2007 say if it received any funds from Olint sometime in 2007?
In any event, both the PNP and the JLP did business with David Smith and loved him. And for that reason this matter is going to be skilfully swept under the carpet.
