Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the Indian company Ghana chose under questionable circumstances for domestic revenue mobilization has suffered a huge setback in the US as an Appeals court judge has upheld a $194 million fine slapped on the company in June 2024 for misappropriation of trade secrets.
TCS informed shareholders via Indian stock exchanges, that it has received an adverse ruling from a US appeals court, which has upheld nearly $194 million damages award against it in a long-running trade secrets lawsuit.
The case, originally filed by Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), now part of DXC Technology Company, alleged that TCS misappropriated its trade secrets, leading to a US District Court ruling in June 2024, where the fine was slapped on TCS.
The latest development came on the evening of November 21, 2025, when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit confirmed the decision on damages issued by a lower district court.
However, the appellate court provided partial relief to TCS by vacating an associated injunction and sending that part of the case back to the lower court for reassessment.
This ruling follows an initial adverse judgment that TCS disclosed to Indian stock exchanges in June 2024. At that time, the company revealed that the US District Court, Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, had found it liable for misappropriation of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016.
Contract Award in Ghana
The June ruling came months before TCS got picked single-handedly by former Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Julie Essiam for the Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS) contract in Ghana under very questionable circumstance.
The interesting thing about the selection of TCS for this contract in Ghana is that TCS did not even win the competitive bidding process, which originally featured 13 entities, from which three were shortlisted. Of the three that got shortlisted, KPMG was hired by GRA to do a final review and the results of that audit by KPMG was clear:
- The three shortlisted companies were Axon Information System (Ghana), Atos and Persol Systems (Ghana) and Tata Consultancy Services (India).
- All three entities scored 80% and above at the technical proposal level, which means, technically, all three had what it took to execute the contract
- Then at the financial proposal level, Axon was scored 20/20 because they had the lowest cost of $41.99 million. Atos and Persol came second with 13.76/20 with a price of US$61 million and TCS came last with 12.07/20 because they had the highest price of over US$69 million.
How TCS eventually got selected for the contract still remains a mystery till today. Julie Essiam had earlier told the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) that TCS had the lowest price of US$29 million, and she even beat it down to $25 million. But just last month, the current finance minister, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson secured over US$10 million of tax exemption for TCS, which means the contract cost is in the region of US$50 million. So Julie Essiam did not tell PAC the truth about the cost of the contract.
Meanwhile, even without negotiating Axon’s price down, that company, which is a Ghanaian company, offered to do the contract at the cost of US$41.99 million, which is lower than TCS’s discounted price. Moreover, Axon is also a wholly-owned Ghanaian company committed to investing its earnings here and also securing the country’s data sovereignty, as all the data related to domestic tax will be stored on servers here.
The other concern is that Axon is the current contractor for domestic tax mobilization, and the record is there to show that since it rolled out its GITMIS (Ghana Integrated Tax Management and Information System), which is an ITAS, GRA has for four consecutive years exceeded its tax revenues by billions of Ghana cedis, including even a historic feat mid-year in an election year.
On the contrary, TCS had earlier rolled out its solution in four other African countries, where reports indicate they have not offered the best of services. A former GRA Commissioner-General, Rev. Dr. Amisshadai Owusu-Amoah admitted that his own personal visits to these African countries to examine the work of TCS indicated that there were grave challenges.
So, how a company like that, which also has a record of misappropriation of another company’s trade secrets, was selected to do domestic tax mobilization in Ghana and have access to our national data, still beats one’s mind, particularly regarding whether our politicians and public servants have national interest or some other interest at heart.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor has long been petitioned to look into this matter. But like in many other cases, it has dragged its feet until now that a new government has come and rationalize the contract, even though the current finance minister admitted in Parliament that the contract was a mess.
It is also important to note that even the local partner of TCS, IPMC, which is also an Indian-owned company, was in 2014 caught up in an issue regarding tax evasion by another big Indian-owned merchant in Ghana. It is important to look at that case again and see what the implications of handing over our domestic tax mobilization to these two Indian companies could mean for the tax revenues we expect from Indian and other foreign companies in Ghana.
As the case has always been, politicians and public servants will contracts to foreign companies, and once those companies fail, the fall on domestic companies who could have done a better job, to then come in and clean up the mess and save the day. Once the mess is cleaned up, another set of politicians and public servant run quickly to foreign companies again and will contracts to them. This vicious cycle must stop at some point. Post COVID, every country has learnt the value of developing and depending on domestic solutions and expertise, except African countries like Ghana.
