Energy Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, kicked against the revenue mobilisation contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML).
This is contained in the report provided by KPMG after its audit into the agreement that saw Ghana paying GHC1.4billion to SML for partially fulfilling its duties.
The GRA entered into six contracts with SML with the last one being an Addendum to Measurement for Downstream Petroleum Products Agreement (effective from July 29, 2020).
But the Energy Ministry, headed by Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh a.k.a. Nana Poku (Napo) kicked against the arrangement, indicating it wasn’t going to benefit the state.
During his presentation on the KeyPoints on TV3 Saturday, May 25, 2024, private legal practitioner, Martin Luther Kpebu, lamented over that bit of the report indicating the continuation of the contract despite the Energy Minister’s opposition was due to the President’s brother’s involvement.
According to him, President Akufo-Addo selected KPMG to conduct the audit due to the relationship the firm has with the government, in order to soften the findings in the probe to protect his brother, Ken Ofori-Atta, the former Finance Minister.
“If you look at the scope, page 42, if you go to needs assessment, contracting methodology, contract performance, value and benefits, financial arrangements, then recommendations, you see that it didn’t talk about the losses. And that was the genesis of this whole thing, that, they were causing financial loss being orchestrated by Ofori-Atta. Napo was not happy about it. Napo was very much against it. It’s not in favour of this report, this SML deal and when you read through, you will see the Minister of Energy saying that, no, they don’t like this.”
“So, you see that the President skewed the assignment. He didn’t talk about any losses, but he’s interested in benefits, which, as I’ve said, when you read through there, they don’t have the most up-to-date machines. And, as we make the point that this KPMG report is skewed, one other way of doing it is that when you read from page 195 onward, you see that they interviewed everybody else apart from Manasseh,” he added.
Prior to the release of the full report, Mr. Kpebu had insinuated that the President was refusing to make the report public to protect his brother, the former Finance Minister.
