Private legal practitioner, Martin Luther Kpebu, has dismissed the KPMG report on the Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) contract with Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML), describing it as a “whitewash”.
He has expressed the integrity deficit in appointing KPMG as the firm to conduct the performance audit due to its symbiotic relationship with the GRA, establishing the likelihood to compromise the report.
He says conflict of interest characterised the audit from the start due to the GRA-KPMG relationship, which downplays the credibility of the report.
“This KPMG report is not up to scratch, it’s just a whitewash. they haven’t done any good job at all…from day one, the writing was on the wall that KPMG was not up to the task because they couldn’t be independent enough. They have relations with GRA” he said on Accra-based Citi FM Wednesday, April 24, 2024.
President Akufo-Addo commissioned KPMG to audit the contract between the two organisations on January 02, 2024. The deadline for the audit’s completion was extended from the original date of Tuesday, January 16, 2024, to Friday, February 23, 2024.
The audit disclosed that SML had received a total of GH¢1,061,054,778.00 from 2018 to date while partially fulfilling its obligations. The report, however, revealed that the work of SML had increased revenue in the downstream petroleum sector.
SML, has, however, refuted the claim that it received GH¢1,061,054,778.00 for its revenue mobilisation contract with the GRA, arguing that KPMG cited the figure “without reference to the investments made and the taxes paid” during the review period.
Meanwhile, Honorary Vice President of IMANI-Africa, Bright Simons, has asked the government to make public, the full report presented by KPMG.
Despite the gains made by the state in revenue and volumes of oil due to the Company’s audit in the downstream sector according to the findings, the report recommended that the contract be renegotiated and other aspects re-looked before further measures can be taken.
Following the revelations, Bright Simons thinks the portions of the report lauding the SML for contributing to an increased revenue is not factual.
In a write-up on his social media, he commended the President’s appreciation of certain infractions in the contract and accepting certain recommendations made, but insisted on certain inaccuracies which require clarification.
“It is helpful that the President of Ghana accepts that infractions occurred in the award of the SML contracts, that have so far netted the company more than 1 BILLION GHS. It was inevitable that the attempt to extend this same troubling arrangement to the mining & petroleum drilling sectors for an additional US$100 million a year would not stand scrutiny, so the decision to halt that process was expected. As is also widely known, the pre-shipment inspection work SML took from West Blue and was being paid for was a duplication of existing services. The President has finally come to that same conclusion,” he said Wednesday, April 24, 2024.
“The Presidency’s “whitepaper” also acknowledges that substantial work must be done to determine the country’s needs before the award of any contracts for revenue assurance in the “downstream” fuel market (especially the linkages between the wholesale depots and fuel retail outlets). And it is a no-brainer that if any company is to render any service in this area at all, then they must receive a fixed fee and not be paid percentages of taxes collected by the State, which was the case in the now suspended SML contract,” he added.
Bright Simons, however, demanded that the entire report be put in the public domain to give clarification to certain allusions made to SML in terms of revenue and volumes of oil appreciation which he says, are not true.
“However, we are seriously disappointed by a number of elements of the President’s “whitepaper”. We insist on seeing the full KPMG report. We dispute their apparent claim that any increase in petroleum consumption in Ghana should be attributed to SML. We demand an open forum to show that the weight of expert opinion in Ghana is against any such flawed reasoning,” he added.
GH¢1bn payment to us inaccurate – SML refutes claim in KPMG report
