Questions should be asked over ‘systematic ripoff’

Dear Editor,

You have reported the significance of tax issues faced by Norman George and his associated company and made considerable ground in your attempt to ridicule the man with Kata.

But failed you have and miserably, to ask more serious questions relating to the millions in uncollected taxes from CITC – being permitted to import not JUST soft drinks, but juices, energy drinks and others using a two-invoice system over a two-decade systematic ripoff.

How would you describe this, would that meet your standards for ‘evasion’?

Your conspicuous failure to ask these questions when such questions needed to be asked.

The significance of the advantage enjoyed by CITC is unparalleled in Cook Islands commercial history.

Instead you chose for some unknown reason and we can only speculate, to place this story in a quarter page spread somewhere deep in page 7 in this newspaper some time last year when almost word for word you printed exactly what audit had published. There were no cartoons from Kata, and there were no questions from you and there it lay for almost a year until today September 11. Which made me ponder the significance of unprejudiced reporting.

When are you going to ask and publish the response from Financial Secretary Richard Neves this question?

Given the significance of this issue and the length of time it has been engineered and the volume of such transactions, and the complicity of the former Collector of Taxes Mr Stoddart being the ‘inside man’, how would you describe his role?

Now employed in PERCA, an agency that should be re-examining this whole mess because the first attempt met with resistance from Mr Stoddart, the Audit report says this and the senseless decisions spotlight it, that have led to such a significant amount of public revenue in the millions to remain uncollected and significant amount of money in the millions to be refunded to CITC, once again we can only speculate.

When the pursuit of taxes (like Withholding Tax) from kids’ savings for higher education or the old and infirm struggling to survive on meagre pensions or small fairly insignificant business owners takes precedence?’

Don’t take your time Mr Neves, your next employer may not be as forgiving.

James Beer

Manea Foods

Editor: Mr Neves has been asked to respond.