President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo chose KPMG to conduct the audit on the revenue mobilisation contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML) on purpose.
Martin Luther Kpebu, a private legal practitioner who made the comment thinks KPMG was soft on SML, considering the fact that the report did not quantify the losses that were incurred in executing the contract.
According to him, the President, having in mind the relationship between government and KPMG, contracted them to undertake the audit in order not to unearth the entire rot shrouded in the deal, just as the report’s failure to quantify the losses the state made.
During his analysis following the release of the full report by the Presidency, Mr. Kpebu held that, rather than the losses the state incurred, the President was more focused on the benefits, drifting attention from the the profitability or otherwise of the contract.
“Today, we have to look at what we’ve lost. You see that the report, though very soft on SML… and of course, you can understand why the President chose KPMG, because they know that government has dealings with KPMG, so KPMG will be very charitable when it comes to the most critical part of the report, which is the loss. So you see that they’ve not quantified the loss. And going through the report, you see that the terms of reference, they didn’t actually talk about quantifying losses,” the renowned lawyer indicated.
He complained that “rather, the President was interested in benefits which are not properly articulated. So for me, it’s clear that we should be looking at getting the losses together and do a prosecution, because the report admits that there are parts that SML did not deliver,” he added.
