Three former senior officials of the Ghana Revenue authority, including a former Commissioner-General, have been taken into custody as part of an expanding investigation into a high-stakes corruption scandal tied to a controversial revenue assurance contract awarded to a private firm, Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML).
Rev. Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, the former head of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), was detained late Tuesday along with Dr. Isaac Crentsil, former Commissioner of Customs, and Christian Tetteh Sottie, a former technical advisor to the GRA Commissioner-General. The trio was arrested by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) and spent the night in the custody of the National Intelligence Bureau after reportedly failing to meet bail requirements.
The arrests mark a significant escalation in a corruption probe that has rocked Ghana’s public finance institutions and implicated current and former officials in what investigators describe as illegal contracting, conflict of interest, and abuse of procurement laws.
According to investigative reports, the three men played central roles in the approval and ratification of multi-million-dollar contracts between the GRA and SML, a little-known private company that, despite lacking a verifiable track record in revenue assurance, secured contracts worth over $141 million by the end of 2023.
The OSP investigation was triggered by a year-long exposé led by journalists from The Fourth Estate, which revealed that SML—a firm originally linked to the timber industry and incorporated just weeks after President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration took office in 2017—had received lucrative government deals without the legally required approvals from Ghana’s Public Procurement Authority (PPA).
Despite repeated rejections from the PPA, which cited SML’s lack of capacity, the GRA proceeded to award contracts to the company. The situation intensified in 2023 when then-Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta—who has since been declared wanted by the OSP—spearheaded a consolidated contract that entitled SML to over $100 million annually for expanded monitoring services across Ghana’s oil, mining, and port sectors.
Rev. Dr. Owusu-Amoah, who previously served as CEO of UniBank Ghana and Bank of Africa Tanzania, was GRA Commissioner-General during the final ratification of the SML contracts. Under his leadership, the GRA entered into the expanded deal with SML in defiance of procurement regulations, according to investigators.
Dr. Crentsil, who served as Customs Commissioner from 2017 to 2019, and later as a technical advisor at the Finance Ministry, now serves as General Manager at SML. Mr. Sottie, formerly a technical advisor at GRA, is now Managing Director of the company. Their transition from public regulators to top executives in the private firm they once engaged has drawn scrutiny and allegations of conflict of interest.
Another former GRA chief, Emmanuel Kofi Nti, who initially sought PPA approval for single-source contracting with SML’s predecessor—Strategic Mobilisation Enhancement Limited (SMEL)—has also been questioned. The PPA denied all three of Mr. Nti’s requests between 2017 and 2018, citing the company’s incapacity to perform the services it was being contracted for. Despite this, the GRA proceeded with the deals, and SMEL later rebranded as SML without significant structural change.
Also under investigation is Philip Mensah, the former GRA head of legal services, who now serves as SML’s legal advisor, as well as Evans Edusei, the company’s CEO.
The OSP’s wide-ranging probe has put a spotlight on the systemic weaknesses in Ghana’s procurement oversight mechanisms and the revolving door between public office and private enterprise. As the inquiry deepens, public attention is likely to focus on how high up the chain the scandal goes—and whether key political figures, including former finance officials, will be brought to justice.
Source:TheDotNews