Revenue Authority staff, shipping agents connive to cheat system
The Western Regional Commander of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Mr Fredrick Gavor has warned individuals and businesses to desist from conniving with others to under-declare imports in order to evade taxes.
He said such practices cannot escape prosecution because even if they succeed in cheating today, Customs had up to six years to investigate and conduct document reviews and thereafter go after offenders to retrieve the taxes when anomalies are detected.
Confirming incidents of collusion between some revenue officers of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and some shipping agents as well as security agencies at the Takoradi Port to cheat the system through forged import documents under-declaration of values, he said hefty penalties await offenders.
It emerged during investigations by the Daily Graphic that sometimes goods due for scanning to determine the actual contents and real values skip the process on the orders of senior officers at the port. Thus agents and their proxies in the customs and national security at the port succeed in moving several goods out of the port undetected, resulting in loss of revenue to the state.
Top-level officers of the Customs in the region are said to have intensified controls and successfully blocked several of such deals. Other officers suspected of involvement in other shady deals have been reassigned.
There was an instance where the import documents covering an expensive meat product was forged resulting in the reduction of custom duty by more than 50 per cent.
The product was meant to be supplied to offshore vessels operating at the country’s oil and gas fields.
The agent, according to documents made available to the Daily Graphic, described the goods as frozen chicken weighing 12,279.21 kilograms with unit price of $2.70 and the total value of $33,153.87.
A GRA staff carried out physical examination of the consignment and did not allow the container to be scanned on the orders of a senior officer.
Interestingly all the agencies within customs and the port, which should have detected the anomalies failed and the documents were made to pass with the Gate Pass stamp.
Luck however ran out on the cabal when the goods reached the final gate to be moved out of the port where a diligent senior GRA officer (a chief collector) questioned and refused to be compromised and ordered the goods to return to the port for the proper thing to be done.
The chief collector questioned why there were no permits from the Veterinary Services Department, and the Food and Drugs Authority, which are requirements for bringing food products out of the port.
Another document available to the Daily Graphic indicate that expensive finished furniture imported from Durban in South Africa was wrongly described as wardrobe for a hotel in Takoradi. Duty on it came to GH₵13,850.00. That foul deal was exposed by a questionable 2,000 meter length each indicated for the ‘wardrobe’.
After the deal was discovered, the concealed excess goods were valued at GH₵20,854.00 and a 100 per cent penalty brought the total amount payable to GH₵41,708.00.
As at the time of filing this report, the Customs sector commander and his team were said to have blocked another deal with about GH₵40,000 retrieved while other curious deals were being investigated.
Picture & Story: Moses Dotsey Aklobortu, Takoradi Port