In the first of this series, The Fourth Estate’s Evans Aziamor-Mensah, Adwoa Adobea-Owusu and Manasseh Azure Awuni revealed that Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML), which started revenue assurance services to the government of Ghana in 2020 had made several false claims.
The company claimed in February 2023 that it had saved Ghana over GHc3 billion in revenue that would have been lost to the state but for its services in the contract it signed with the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).
The investigation found this claim to be completely false. The Managing Director of SML, Christian Tetteh Sottie, claimed he did not know about the figure when The Fourth Estate confronted him with counter-evidence.
He said the media, including the state-owned Daily Graphic, had taken a presentation SML made to the GRA board out of context and reported the wrong information. He said SML had called the journalists to draw their attention to the supposed error.
When asked why the story of saving Ghana GHc3 billion was still on the website of SML the morning of the interview with The Fourth Estate, in July 2023, he said, “I don’t of any website matter(sic).”
The company had also claimed that its services had stopped “under-reporting, diversion and dilution of fuel products and general non-compliance in the petroleum industry sector.”
When The Fourth Estate confronted the company with evidence that it did not perform any of those services that tackled those problems, which were the causes of revenue leakages in the downstream petroleum sector, SML admitted its claims were false and deleted them from the website of SML that same day.
SML also admitted its ultrasound metres at the nation’s fuel depots were less accurate than the metres of the loading gantries at the depots, which are calibrated and certified by the Ghana Standards Authority every six months.
The GRA and the Ministry of Finance contracted SML to monitor the volumes of petroleum products lifted. However, the GRA told The Fourth Estate that the figures SML churned out as its monitoring of volumes were not the ones GRA uses to calculate petroleum taxes or revenue for the state. The GRA uses figures from the loading gantries, which the authority was using even before SML was contracted.
https://thefourthestategh.com/2023/12/18/10-year-questionable-contract-by-finance-minister-gives-sml-over-100-million-annually-despite-false-claims/
