By Frederick ASIAMAH
The Ghana Tax Justice Coalition has noted with dismay, the on-going reports and allegations of wanton abuse and misuse of public resources in the country, a phenomenon that aids illicit financial flows in Ghana.
“The wider illicit financial flows are a huge scourge on our sovereignty and we must be safeguarding public resources better than we are currently doing,” the Coalition said in a statement copied to Business Day last Wednesday.
It said in recent times it has taken notice of the numerous allegations and counter allegations of misdeeds that bother on corruption, abuse of office and the facilitation of losses to state, all of which are forms of illicit financial flows.
The statistics on alleged financial misappropriation that trouble the Coalition include reports in May that the National Communications Authority allegedly misappropriated state resources to the tune of $4 million.
Also, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Peter Amewu told Journalists in Accra that, ‘in the year 2016, $2.3 billion worth of gold left this country through illicit mining.’ Furthermore, the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) reportedly busted 12 boxes of gold bullion that weighed about 480kg at the Kotoka International Airport, valued at US$18 million.
In addition, ISODEC, in a report launched in April 2017, noted that SINOPEC may have gotten away with much more than entitled to, from its dealings with Ghana because Parliament failed in its duty to scrutinise those contracts.
There is also the case where the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) in April, 2017, noted that Ghana loses about $850 million annually in tax revenues from illegal fuel imports.
To top it all up, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo recently revealed in the UK that there were many instances of losses at Ghana’s ports through tax evasion with the connivance of Customs officials, some of whom were being investigated.
Now, the Coalition says “The BOST saga seems to have died already although it is clear that many Ghanaians are not satisfied with the government’s explanation.
“The current running issues at the Electoral Commission of Ghana, including the sale of vehicles to employees for peanuts, only add up to a litany of institutional lapses and disregard for laws that allow individuals and companies to loot state resources needed for development.
“All of these point to a nation that is ‘bleeding!’, yet more than 500,000 of the country’s children are unable to enrol into primary school because the state is unable to provide adequate logistics and facilities for additional schools and children,” the TJC said.
Nonetheless, “It is welcome news that the government has indicated that it is going to prosecute former government officials who are found to have engaged in corrupt acts,” the TJC noted.
But it “wonders why any investigation and prosecution of persons engaged in corruption should be limited to former government officials. The Coalition insists that corruption is corruption no matter who is involved and so any investigations and prosecution should cover all public officials no matter whether they are former or current government officials.
“The Coalition wishes to remind the Nana Addo government that it was with the urgency of this kind of wastages and bleeding of state resources that the 4th Joint African Union Commission/United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (AUC/ECA) Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development commissioned the study into Illicit Financial Flows in Africa.”
This Conference mandated the ECA to establish the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa of which corruption constitutes a cross cutting problem that facilitates the broad Illicit Financial Flows out of Africa.
The Report of the African Union/ Economic Commission of Africa’s (ECA) High Level Panel (2015) revealed that Africa lost about 1 trillion US dollars between 1980 and 2008 through IFFs.
Ghana is among the top 10 countries in Africa haemorrhaging resources that can transform the country for the majority of its citizens.
It is calculated that these amounts, quoted in billions of US dollars, include proceeds of corruption and the kind of dissipation of public resources currently going on, and if were available, “could provide Ghana with about 300 times more of the ‘Tema motorway’ throughout Ghana or give free education to 7.3 million secondary school students, yet still, provide space for the over 500,000 Ghanaian children who are out of school each year and loitering on fringes of the cities,” TJC observed.
Therefore, “We call on the Government to take a serious view of these issues, and where appropriate, lead a national crusade against the institutional lapses that give rise to corruption and abuse of office and dissipation of scarce state resources.
“The current issues must not die the natural deaths we are accustomed to, the outcomes of all the investigations must lead to deterrent actions open to public scrutiny and where people are accused wrongly, exonerated properly but where guilt is adduced, punished accordingly,” the TJC demanded.
