The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Ramps Lo­gis­tics, Shaun Ram­per­saud, is due to re­turn to a mag­is­trate’s court on No­vem­ber 25, af­ter he was re­leased on half a mil­lion dol­lars (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) bail on 10 charges of false de­c­la­ra­tions made over the past two years to the Guyana Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (GRA).

Ram­per­saud plead­ed not guilty to the charges when he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Leron Daly, and his at­tor­ney, Nigel Hugh­es, in his ap­pli­ca­tion for self-bail said that his client has strong ties to Guyana and has an un­blem­ished record.

He said his client does not pose a flight risk and re­turned here on Thurs­day to de­fend the com­pa­ny’s name.

The GRA al­leges that the lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny that had orig­i­nal­ly been based in Trinidad and To­ba­go, had be­tween 2021 and 2022, made 10 false de­c­la­ra­tions on ap­pli­ca­tions pre­sent­ed to a cus­toms of­fi­cer for tax ex­emp­tions on sev­er­al items.

The court was told that Ramps al­leged­ly false­ly de­clared that it was the sell­er of items which in­clud­ed heavy-du­ty equip­ment, and chem­i­cal com­pounds among oth­ers.

Me­dia re­ports here said that the case against Ramps Lo­gis­tics fol­lowed the re­cent an­nounce­ment by the com­pa­ny that it had filed a law­suit against the gov­ern­ment for the non-is­suance of a lo­cal con­tent cer­tifi­cate to op­er­ate in the oil and gas sec­tor.

In its law­suit, the com­pa­ny is con­tend­ing that the state’s de­ci­sion to de­ny its ap­pli­ca­tion for en­try on the Lo­cal Con­tent Reg­is­ter and non-is­suance of the Cer­tifi­cate of Lo­cal Con­tent Reg­is­tra­tion, is “un­law­ful, un­rea­son­able and ar­bi­trary.”

As a re­sult, it is seek­ing sev­er­al court or­ders, in­clud­ing an or­der com­pelling the Guyana gov­ern­ment to is­sue the cer­tifi­cate and reg­is­ter it in the LCS.

The mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to be heard be­fore act­ing Chief Jus­tice, Rox­ane George on No­vem­ber 11.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Oct 21, CMC