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Mr Isaac Crentsil — Commissioner, Customs
Mr Isaac Crentsil — Commissioner, Customs

GRA ban two clearing agents

The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), has banned two clearing agents from transacting business with the authority.

They are alleged to have engaged in some malpractices that cost the state huge sums in tax revenue in August, last year.

The two, Vida Deganus, a freelance clearing agent and Nii Adjei Sowah, an employee of Fantegah Co. Ltd, falsified the port of loading document from India to other countries and under-declared the values.

It follows investigations into the activities of the Fantegah Co. Ltd, a freight forwarder company after it was accused with other freight forwarder companies that they had under-declared the values that cost the state some $384,754.83 in revenue.

The affected companies — Nasowah Enterprise, Abacus Digital Media Limited, Wayglow Enterprise, Too Smatt Enterprise and Dovis Clearing House Limited.

The Customs Division of GRA revoked the licences of the firms after it had established that they “falsified the port of loading document from India to other countries and under-declared the values”.

The falsified values were then presented to GRA for duty and tax purposes, resulting in loss of revenue.

This was revealed in an internal memo that required the revocation of licences and which was made available to the GRAPHIC BUSINESS.

The memo explained that the alleged illegalities of the companies benefited themselves and their clients, who are companies and individual importers.

The companies are Tobinco, Wimped Co. Limited, Open Heaven Manufacturing & Co. Ltd and Royal Gold.

The individual importers include Kwame Okyere, Faustina Osei Opoku and Justina Kuma.

Further investigations

Further investigations, however, into the activities of the company in question has established that Vida Deganus and Nii Adjei Sowah, initiated the deal without the authority of Fantegah Co. Ltd.

On three separate occasions, the two persons cleared safety matches for two different importers – Kwesi Poku and Kwame Okyere – and declared that the goods, on one occasion, were from India and the rest were from China.

The GRA, memo, however, indicated that the ICEGATE platform showed that the port of loading for the goods was India. They consequently paid $26,000 as duties on the matches instead of $94,013.6.

GRA has banned the two persons involved from entering any Customs Division of the GRA office to transact business.

The licence of the company in question has subsequently been ratified and it has since started operating the freight business.

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