Safaritech Ghana Limited, the company whose work led to MTN Ghana being slapped with a controversial tax liability of over GHS8.2 billion has had its headquarters in London dissolved since March 16, 2021.
Additionally, Techfocus24 sources in the UK say the company only maintained virtual addresses in London since 2016, and also had a dormant account with only £100 balance since inception till its final dissolution on March 16, 2021.
On its website, www.safaritech.biz, which is now not accessible, the company claimed to be “a base of the IMF” with its headquarters office in London, where it was registered as Safaritech Limited with Company Number 10287352.
But hours after Techgh24 put out the information about its alleged relationship with the IMF and claim to be headquartered in London, the company took down its website claiming it is doing updates.
Techfocus24 earlier wrote to IMF via media@IMF.org, seeking to understand the relationship between it and Safaritech. IMF has not responded yet. Similar correspondence were sent to UNDP, USAID and the World Bank but none of them responded.
Also Read: MTN’s GHS8 billion tax: GRA ditched KPMG for IMF agent Safaritech
But the new information emerging now is that Safaritech’s headquarters in London has long been closed down, even though the claim to be headquartered in London was included in their bid for the Ghana job.
Per the company’s filing and dissolution history, it was first incorporated in the UK on June 20, 2016, with Andrew Gathuo Chege from Kenya as the only director, and it was dissolved on March 16, 2021.
The company actually applied for its name to be struck out of the companies’ register in London on December 8, 2020, which was then gazetted on December 15 and finally effected on March 16, 2021.
Shady Virtual Address
Prior to the March 16 dissolution, Safaritech changed its registered office address in London at least twice. It first registered with 4-5 Gough Square London EC4A 3DE England, the on November 26, 2018, it changed to Foframe House, 35-37 Brent Street London NW4 2EF. Then on June 10, 2020, it changed the office address again to Suite G1, Hartsbourne House Delta Gain Watford WD19 5EF, which it maintained till the final dissolution in March 16, 2021.
Checks by Techfocus24 on all of the addresses Safaritech stated as its headquarters office in London indicate that those were nothing more than virtual addresses, where, according to sources, “shady people” pay to have their businesses registered but they do not necessarily have an office at those addresses.
Dormant Account
The records also show that between June 10 and August 17, 2020, Safaritech went through a series of activities, including one appointment, two termination of appointments, filing for closure of office until its account actually went dormant before it finally applied for shutdown in December same year.
The London office replaced Andy Chege with one Hasanain Haji as the one person with significant control but they never filed even one account statement in London except the dormant one on August 17, 2020, prior to their dissolution.
The LinkedIn profile of Hasanain Haji indicates he was also the Managing Director of Savanah Goldfields (Ghana) Limited for seven years, between January 2007 and January 2014.
So, by 2019, when the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) said it engaged Safaritech to audit MTN, the company was actually a dormant company in the UK where it claimed to be headquartered – in other words they were not trading.
This is the company whose work GRA chose to accept over that of the highly-reputed KPMG, and then slapped a controversial tax liability on MTN, a company it has for many years rewarded as the highest corporate taxpayer in the country.
Also Read: MTN Ghana slapped with GHS8 billion tax liability amidst protest
MTN is challenging the tax assessment and Techgh24 has learnt that for the reputational damage and the criminal implications of the matter, MTN is not taking the matter lightly at all.
Meanwhile, the GRA has put out a statement defending its action in slapping MTN with the tax liability.
Subsequent to this story, Techfocus24 dug further and did a series of stories exposing the dodgy character of Safaritech, which eventually led to the Ghana Revenue Authority cancelling the GHS8.2 billion back tax on MTN.
Find the links to the series of stories below, to get the full extent of the story, and why the GRA had no choice than to set the work of Safaritech aside:
MTN vs GRA: Screenshots from dodgy SAFARITECH’S deleted website plus more
MTN tax dispute: SAFARITECH smoked out of its rat hole
SAFARITECH: Name behind Ghana contact number is from Mauritius
