Over Alleged Information Concealment
Questions have emerged regarding the transparency of the acting Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) Commissioner-General in relation to the contentious agreement between the revenue agency and Strategic Mobilization Limited (SML).
Anthony Kwasi Sarpong, whose appointment by President John Dramani Mahama was met with opposition and legal action by some grassroots members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), is a former senior partner at KPMG.
This audit firm was reluctantly tasked by the previous government to investigate the SML deal following allegations of impropriety raised by investigative reporting.
Concerns have been raised about the thoroughness of KPMG’s investigation, with accusations that the firm may have downplayed or overlooked incriminating evidence.
Recall that in December 2023 the investigation by Fourth Estate’s revealed that SML Ghana won the sole-sourced contract though it had no prior experience in revenue assurance. It also found that the company had no evidence to back its claim that it had saved the nation from potential revenue losses amounting to GHS3 billion.
The Managing Director (D-G) of SML, Christian Tetteh Sottie, claimed he did not know about the GHS3 billion figure when he was confronted with evidence.
He said the media, including the state-owned Daily Graphic, had taken a presentation SML made to the GRA board out of context and reported the wrong information. The same information, however, was published on the company’s website.
The investigations also detailed the circumstances surrounding the signing of an expanded consolidated contract worth nearly USD100 million a year for revenue assurance in the upstream petroleum and gold mining sectors.
It showed that in 2019 when the GRA entered into the agreement with SML Ghana, Mr Sottie was the Technical Advisor to the Commissioner-General of the GRA, Rev Amisshaddai Owusu-Amoah, a darling of Mr Ofori-Atta who was appointed in the same year and his contract renewed.
Mr Sottie left his job as the Technical Advisor to the GRA Commissioner-General in the same year to manage SML Ghana in 2020 when the company started implementing its contract with the GRA.
The same SML deal is contained in the work of the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) chaired now by Foreign Affairs Minister, and Member of Parliament (MP) for the North Tongu constituency, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.
According to the 5-member committee document sighted by The New Republic said “Investigations revealed that SML, a company with limited prior experience, was awarded a significant revenue assurance contract without proper procurement procedures, including the absence of parliamentary approval. The contract was valued at approximately $100 million annually over ten years. A KPMG audit highlighted irregularities, such as the ineffectiveness of SML’s monitoring systems and non-compliance with tax obligations”.
Even though the contract was not signed under the third and last GRA boss Julie Essiam, there is growing concern that the new boss relates quite well with his predecessor and coupled with his strong ties with the previous government, it is feared that, Mr Sarpong sitting at the top may attempt to conceal information which otherwise could have been used to investigate past government officials.
Mr Sarpong was also allegedly appointed by former President Akufo-Addo as his representative on the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG), a decision in September 2020, showing how close the two were.
The fear of curtailment of information, and conflict of interest issues keep hanging around the neck of Mr Sarpong after it also emerged that, it was KPMG that was contracted by GRA to do recruitments for them.
This is despite the fact that the Authority has a Human Resource (HR) department to rightfully take this task.
In the event that there are questionable contracts aside the SML deal, that is not in the public domain yet, concerns of many especially those at the GRA sympathetic to the government party is that, he may not allow it to be known because his friends and associates may be involved.
Interestingly, there is allegation that Mr Sarpong while with his former employers KPMG played his political game so well that he was able operate with the two major political parties.
He allegedly funded both the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP). Any wonder that despite agitations and call on the appointing authorities to rescind decision of Mr Sarpong’s appointment, it has fallen on deaf ears.
For a government that campaigned and promised to fight corruption and it related matters head on, the concern of many is that if bodies such as ORAL can effectively execute it mandate, then more needs to be done to seal all loopholes and eyes fixed on individuals who played ball with the previous government and have been given bigger roles in this government too.