3 GRA employees, Police Constable charged for forging drivers’ licenses

Three staff of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Police Special Constable were today slapped with computer-related forgery charges over the issuance of driver’s licences.

Reguel Jack, a Lodgment Clerk, Akeem Martin, a Lodgment Clerk, Ruth Williams, a Query Clerk, and Winston Small, a Police Special Constable, all appeared before Senior Magistrate Leron Daly in the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court and pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Martin and Williams were jointly charged, while Jack and Small were charged separately. The quartet was granted $100,000 bail each, and the matter was adjourned to August 29.

Reports are that the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) conducted an investigation at GRA, which revealed that during the month of October 2021, the Police Special Constable arranged with Shaquan Caesar, a minibus conductor, who was working with Antoney Salaman Jacobs, a bus driver, that he can get a driver’s licence for him for $83,000 from GRA.

Small indicated to Caesar that he could use Jacobs’ driver’s licence, and he would get someone to change the photograph.

Caesar managed to get a photograph of Jacobs’ licence and, on November 1, 2021, got a Justice of Peace to issue an affidavit.

The same day, Small took Caesar to GRA with the affidavit, where Jack processed the driver’s licence with Jacobs’s driver’s licence details. The driver’s licence was issued to Caesar, but he lost it two weeks after.

On December 16, 2021, Small and Caesar again obtained another affidavit and went to GRA. This time around, Martin, who took Caesar’s photograph via the Licence Revenue Processing System (LRPS), placed it onto Jacobs’s licence.

He did the transaction without any form of identification. The licence was keyed by Williams, who certified that the transaction was authentic despite irregularities.

Caesar was issued another driver’s licence, and on January 25, 2022, he was arrested for a breach of a traffic offence.

He was questioned by the traffic rank who arrested him about his driver’s, and Caesar admitted that he paid money to get the bogus licence.

He was subsequently charged with forgery and uttering forged documents. He pleaded guilty and was fined.