Due diligence was conducted; Only GHC75m was paid to Subah.

 

The Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, George Blankson has denied that the authority paid GHC 144 million to Subah Infosolutions to monitor and verify the volume of calls of telecom companies for the collection of taxes.

“To begin with the seizure of 144million payment could not be confirmed by my account dept when I contacted them. The actual payment should be in the neighbourhood of about GHC75 million. But to begin with one must make it clear that the agreement between the Revenue Agencies Governing board at the time (RAGB), and Subah was signed in the year 2010. “

The Chronicle newspaper last week reported that GRA paid Subah Infosolutions Ltd., a subsidiary of Jospong group of companies a monthly fee of four million cedis amounting to GHC144 million in total from 2010 to 2013.

According to the paper, the law mandating the monitoring of the calls had been suspended by Parliament and also Subah Infosolutions had no access to systems of the telecom companies to monitor calls yet they were paid by the GRA.

The Chronicle also raised questions about the track record of Subah Infosolutions.

The monitoring was to help the Ghana Revenue Authority in the collection of the Communication Service Tax.

But speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday morning, said the contract was approved after due process had been conducted by the authority.

“So I was not the signatory but I witnessed it and I seized the opportunity to look through all the previous work done and I assured myself fully that all the procedures and the processes and the requirements defined in the procurement act have been complied with. That is a fact. So the contract was awarded after due process had been carried out. As part of the process, the committee of technical people largely drawn from the national communication authority was constituted and they carried out a technical evaluation of the company whether it has the expertise and the equipment to carry out the assignment which is defined in the contract and that assignment is revenue assurance on the communication service task.” He added.

Responding to questions on the law which allowed the GRA to contract the services of Subah, Mr. Blankson said “by the GRA law, GRA is to monitor and to have free access to all records and information of tax payers and the telcos are tax payers. So GRA had legitimate access to the records whether electronics or hard copies. So that is the basis on which the contract was signed. This problem about the physical access became an issue and eventually ended up in court. That is what prevented the physical access from being established with the systems of the telcos.”

He also explained that “The telcos have an obligation and they comply with that obligation beautifully of submitting on a CD-Rom the details of all the calls to the NCA. And it is from that information submitted to the NCA that the Subah Company obtains the CD-Rom and does the analysis to ascertain the veracity of the abrogation of rates.”

CitiFM