It is unclear whether or not the country will be able to use legislation to lift the veil on ownership of businesses ahead of a peer review in September 2016.
The review, which is part of efforts to fight corruption globally, requires member countries like Ghana to establish a beneficial ownership regime.
However, with the amended Companies Bill 2013, which makes provision for the disclosure of beneficial ownership information, yet to go to Parliament, it is not clear if the Bill will be passed into an Act before the House goes on recess in July.
The co-chair of Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Dr Steve Manteaw told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that the major challenge with the establishment of the beneficial ownership regime in Ghana was the limited time the country has to put in place a law to back it.
“The major challenge has to do with time constraint and whether or not we would be able to amend the company Act before Parliament rises. But I know certain steps have been taken, first of which is the fact that a justification for dealing with the matter under a Certificate of Urgency have been provided to the Attorney General’s office and i am sure it has been brought to the leadership of parliament so that we would be able to do this quickly,” he said.
All EITI implementing countries are expected to agree and establish a road map on how to roll out the beneficial ownership regime. At its global conference in Peru earlier this year, implementing countries were given up to January 2017 to adopt a road map to establishing a Beneficial Ownership Disclosure regime; and up to January 2020 to have a Beneficial Ownership Disclosure regime in place.
Ghana in collaboration with the Open Government Partnership (OGP), has started the process with initial discussions among state and non-state actors on how to come up with an effective road map.
High commitment
President John Dramani Mahama, at a summit on tackling corruption in London in May said Ghana was committed to preventing the misuse of companies and legal arrangements to hide the proceeds of corruption by strengthening the Companies Bill to ensure that there is public beneficial ownership information for all sectors.
Dr Steve Manteaw said government has however shown high commitments which means that it was determined in terms of commitments made to ensure that the Ghanaian society free of corruption.
“One thing i know for sure is that government is taking this matter serious. So we ensure that issues like beneficial ownership finds prominence in the commitments that Ghana made,” he said.
Harsher sanctions
Ghana has an obligation to meet under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendation which includes establishing a beneficial ownership regime in Ghana. The country went through a review in 2012 and faced limited sanctions because it did not comply with the standards.
In September, Ghana would go for a pre review and if Ghana fails the sanctions would be harsher.
“In 2012 when we went for the review and we failed there was limited sanction in the form of restrictions in the use of visa cards that were issued by Ghanaian banks because they were not too sure how clean the source of the money was,” he said.
He said during the same period, many Ghanaians experienced visa refusals because of these sanctions.
“What the global international community is trying to do is to save money from going to finance terrorism activities and again preventing the laundering of elicit funds. There is a global effort to sanitise the global financial system and Ghana has to either come along or face sanctions for no compliance with the global standard,” he said. GB