Rishard Khan

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert in­tends to ap­peal a court rul­ing which found him in the wrong over a pro­mo­tion mat­ter at the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

Im­bert made the rev­e­la­tion while cor­rect­ing the record on Tues­day, af­ter he claimed Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal mis­rep­re­sent­ed it while tout­ing it in his Bud­get con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment.

“I think it is nec­es­sary now since he mis­rep­re­sent­ed the facts, mis­quot­ed, dis­tort­ed, ma­nip­u­lat­ed the truth, told down­right un­truths in terms of what re­al­ly hap­pened in that mat­ter. I think it’s in­cum­bent on me to put the truth in­to the record,” Im­bert said.

Im­bert said it was re­cent­ly de­ter­mined that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was re­spon­si­ble for rec­om­mend­ing a per­son for the po­si­tion of chair­man of the BIR to the Cab­i­net. He said this arose when the sub­stan­tive chair­man re­tired, cre­at­ing the need to fill the spot. He said this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was pre­vi­ous­ly mis­tak­en­ly be­lieved to lie with the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

“It is not. The law is quite clear, it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to make a rec­om­men­da­tion to the Cab­i­net, who will then ad­vise the Pres­i­dent to then is­sue the in­stru­ment in favour of who­ev­er had been cho­sen by the cab­i­net to be the chair­man of the Board of In­land Rev­enue, whether in a per­ma­nent po­si­tion or in an act­ing po­si­tion,” he said.

He said af­ter seek­ing ad­vice of se­nior coun­sel, he was told to look at the four most se­nior peo­ple with­in BIR, make in­quiries and in­ter­view each “to ar­rive at a ra­tio­nal de­ci­sion.”

He said he dis­cov­ered one of the se­nior per­son­nel was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit of the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion for al­leged tax fraud.

“I, there­fore, found my­self un­able to rec­om­mend such a per­son to act as chair­man of the Board of In­land Rev­enue. I think I would have to be out of my mind to rec­om­mend that per­son to be the chair­man of the Board of In­land Rev­enue.”

He said he was told his de­ci­sion not to rec­om­mend the per­son for the po­si­tion was ir­ra­tional and told by the judge he should have briefed the per­son on his in­tent to in­ter­ro­gate the al­le­ga­tions and giv­en them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain their side of the sto­ry.