Elephant in the room – Ten questions for GRA about SAFARITECH

Years ago, when Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) under the leadership of George Blankson, and their cohorts in government contracted Subah Infosolutions to do real-time audit on telcos for revenue assurance, it emerged that Subah had been paid over GHS74 million for no work done. At the time, I was at Multimedia, and we kept running stories and programs on the matter. One day, GRA came and parked their van right in front of our office in Kokomlemle and blasted an announcement that from the next day, they will come round and collect tax arrears from all companies on that stretch. That was the end of all stories on the GRA-Subah issue on Multimedia channels.

Long before then, we also had a company called GVG from Haiti, which brought this whole idea of real-time monitoring and auditing of telcos in Ghana for revenue assurance. GVG also walked away with huge sums of money for their supposed work, in spite of the insistence by telcos and even some industry experts that the so-called real-time monitoring and audits on telcos is nothing more than a grand create, loot and share scheme by politicians and their cronies in the private sector.

It has never been difficult to see that every year telcos recorded incremental revenue and the corresponding taxes they pay also go up. But for some reason, African governments have either been deceived or enticed by these monitoring/auditing organizations to believe that they can get more money from telcos, so they employ these entities to help them achieve that. In the end, we end up paying part of the moneys that would have come into national kitty without the intervention of these entities, to these entities in the form of service charges. They then turn round and share that money with their cronies in government who gave them the job.

That has been the history of this ill-intended enterprise called real-time monitoring and telecom revenue assurance audits exacted on this country. The same has been extended to the extractive industry lately.

Bizarre MTN Tax Assessment  

It was in the same spirit that sometime last year, GRA came out and said it had, THROUGH A THRID-PARTY AUDIT FIRM, done a tax assessment on MTN Ghana and it emerged that between 2014 and 2018, MTN hid 30% of its revenue from the GRA. In that regard, MTN was slapped with a back tax of GHS8.2 billion, including penalties for the crime of tax evasion.

It is very interesting to note that almost every time GRA does these audits, whether real-time or retrospectively, they claim to have found something untoward in the dealings of telcos, and yet no telco or telco executive have ever been sued and or jailed for the crime of tax evasion. What GRA always does is to collect money from these telcos and share with the company that did the so-called audit.

But in the case of this GHS8.2 billion, MTN vehemently disputed it and actually declared their intentions to fight it tooth and nail. I can understand MTN perfectly because the implications of such an accusation is more than just financial. It has reputational and criminal implications as well. In spite of MTN’s position, GRA actually came out and defended the assessment, claiming the evidence is there to back the claims.

30% rule  

By law, when GRA slaps any entity with such a tax liability and the organization decides to dispute it, the Commissioner-General has the discretion to compel that entity to pay at least 30% of the amount while the dispute process is ongoing. So, in this case, MTN would have been made to pay over GHS2.7 billion while the dispute process went on – whether in court or in any other forum.

Techfocus24 Investigates

MTN was given a 21-day grace period to negotiate or put up a defence before the GRA why the tax bill is not justified. During those 21 days, Techfocus24, as we have always done, decided to look a bit closer into the matter. As usual, GRA would never make the report of their tax assessment public for Ghanaians to dissect it, and the entities who are targets of these assessments – in this case MTN – will also not share the details of the report with the media for fear that the regulator will find a way to penalize them for leaking a confidential document to the media.

So, at Techfocus24, we were left with only one nagging question in our heads – WHO IS THE THIRD-PARTY AUDIT FIRM THAT DID THE ASSESSMENT ON MTN GHANA?

We were aware that very often, these particular retrospective audits for GRA were done mainly by either KPMG, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Ernst and Young or any of the well-known globally acclaimed auditing firms. But with this particular one, we found out it was done by the local subsidiary of a Kenyan company called SAFARITECH GHANA LIMITED.

Our search on Safaritech just on first page Google threw up a website – www.safaritech.biz – which actually had details of Safaritech Ghana Limited. Per the information on that site:

1. They are the subsidiary of a Kenyan company called Safaritech Limited, which is headquartered in London.
2. They claimed to have over 20 years’ experience in auditing, telecom revenue assurance, research, piloting, sizing training and several other related jobs in Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Malawi, Antigua, Mauritius, Nigeria, Egypt, Jamaica, Gambia, India, Burundi, Sierra-Leone, Bangladesh, South Africa and Malaysia.
3. They claimed to be an agent of IMF, World Bank, USAID, UNDP and GIZ in developing countries and their work is usually sponsored by these organization or by the revenue authorities of the respective countries.
4. Their work has supposedly resulted in various governments realizing incremental tax revenues of between 300% and 500% across the various countries they have worked.
5. Their Ghana office was located at E68/9 Ablade Close, Kanda in Accra – Telephone number 0205802053 (we later found out it was registered with a Ghana Card in the name of Moshin Anverali Pirbhai – a Mauritian citizen) and email address was info@safaritech.biz.

With such an impressive record on their website, one can understand why GRA and any revenue mobilization authority would like to use an entity like Safaritech for the job it supposedly did on MTN Ghana, GRA’s biggest and most decorated corporate taxpayer.

Website Shutdown

But for some strange reason, immediately we published the story about GRA ditching KPMG for ‘IMF agent’ Safaritech, the company took down their website – www.safaritech.biz. One would have thought that the publication of such positive information about Safaritech, should have rather made them feel proud that their pedigree probably justifies why GRA chose them over KPMG. But they rather deleted their website. Initially they put the website on “UPDATING” mode, then later they completely deleted it and it started reading “FORBIDDEN”.

Kenya

So, Techfocus24 was left with only one more option – to look for their Kenyan and London footprints. Our online search for them in Kenya only brought up a postal address (69658-00400 Tom Mboya Street, Nairobi) a phone number (+254(0)202229454) and a description which said they are in the industry of GENERAL BUSINESS. Absolutely nothing was said about auditing, telecom revenue assurance, link to IMF, World Bank, USAID or any of the claims they made on the Safaritech Ghana Limited website. In fact, it appeared as if that website is only visible in Ghana and nowhere else.

London revealed a lot

Then we moved on to look for them at their stated headquarters, London, and this was where things got interesting. Unlike, in Ghana where finding details of a company’s registration is like digging for gold, just first page Google will throw up all the details about any company’s status in London, once you search for it.

On Google we found a weblink where all the details of Safaritech Limited – from INCORPORATION to DISSOLUTION was available. In fact, scanned copies of the actual documents with dates announcing incorporation, naming of directors, change of directors, appointments, termination of appointments, change of addresses, accounts statement, accounts being declared dormant, striking out of companies’ register and actual dissolution were all published on that site.

So, as every good investigative journalist would do, we published all the details as follows:

1. Safaritech was incorporated in London on June 20, 2016 with Company Number 10287352
2. From July 31, 2017, its bank account had only £100 and the company was declared dormant
3. July 2019, the company was issued with a notice that its name will be removed of the British companies’ register unless they show why it should not be removed from the register.
4. Between July 2019 and December 2020, the company changed street address three times, changed directors, appointed directors and terminated appointments just to create the impression it was operational, a prevent the removal from the register.
5. Finally on December 8, 2020, notice of its removal from the companies’ register was filed, then on December 15, 2020 it was gazetted.
6. On March 8, 2021, Safaritech Limited was removed from the companies’ register and the company was finally dissolved on March 16, 2021.

Meanwhile, way back in 2016, it claimed to have executed a contract in Ghana without providing details. And two years before 2019, when it was actually contracted for the MTN tax assessment job, it had been issued with a notice of dormancy and removal from the companies’ register in London. Interestingly, right from that time, its account had only £100 and yet GRA appointed them as an auditor for its most decorated taxpayer, MTN Ghana.

With these details available to us, we reached out to our sources in London to check on the physical street addresses Safaritech listed in its London registration documents, only to find that those were nothing more than virtual addresses where Safaritech never had operational offices.

Boutique

So, then we decided to check on their street address in Ghana as well, only to find that the stated address on their website – E68/9 Ablade Close, Kanda, Accra is actually a ladies Boutique with no name. We actually went into the Boutique and spoke with the attendant who said no such company had ever been in that place. We checked with at two other senior residents of their area who said no such organization had ever occupied that address or any other address on their stretch.

Following our reportage on the fact that Safaritech had no office in Kanda as they stated on their defunct website, we got information from one telecoms industry person, Derek Barnabas Laryea, that Safaritech has showed up at a Spintex address on Google Map. Derek subsequently visited the location and took pictures, which indicated that Safaritech has a thing for using addresses on streets with dead end. This new Spintex address, like the one at Kanda, was a road with a dead end, and everything showed that it is nothing more than someone’s ordinary-looking private residence.

Shutting down the bizarre Back Tax Bill

Subsequent to our expose on Safaritech, there was an attempt by GRA to engage with us, but they did not actually see it through before they decided to shut the whole shameful chase for unwarranted money from MTN down. MTN was let off the hook as any magnanimous regulator would do. It was shameful enough for GRA to have done business with an obviously rogue and fraudulent company like Safaritech Ghana Limited, much less attempting to penalize its most decorated taxpayer on the basis of claims by such a rogue entity.

Time for Accountability

Since the shutdown, though, we have made attempts to get GRA to, in the spirit of accountability, tell Ghanaians how it all started and why they finally decided to shut it down. While we were waiting on GRA for some answers, they recently made an appearance before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and they were asked some of the very questions we have asked. The Commissioner-General of GRA, Rev. Dr. Amishaddai Owusu-Ansah asked to be given two weeks to return to Parliament with some answers.

So, here are the questions we have asked of the GRA and we expect that when the Commissioner-General, who I personally have a great deal of respect for, returns to Parliament, he will answer these ten questions in the most transparent and frank manner like the clergyman he is.

1. How did SAFARITECH GHANA LIMITED get hired for the job?
2. What kind of due diligence was done on SAFARITECH GHANA to verify the authenticity of their claims on their defunct website – safaritech.biz?
3. What exact work did SAFARITECH GHANA do?
4. SAFARITECH claimed to have applied some unique methodology to arrive that its conclusions about MTN. Can you share with us what those methodologies are?
5. How much did the state/taxpayer pay SAFARITECH GHANA for the supposed job they did?
6. We are reliably informed that a lot of that particular tax assessment work on MTN was done by the intelligence unit at GRA, so what was the exactly role of SAFARITECH GHANA in that exercise?
7. What was the basis for rescinding the decision to take GHS8.2 billion from MTN?
8. Apart from the MTN tax assessment, which other jobs has SAFARITECH GHANA done in the country and what has been the result of their work, if any?
9. We are told the GRA was advised about the flaws in the methods and work of SAFARITECH GHAHA, but you set that counsel aside and decided to go ahead with the claims of SAFARITECH GHANA, was this the case, and if so, why?
10. Is the decision to cancel the back tax on MTN an admission that the tax assessment is flawed or there were other considerations other than the questionable characteristics of SAFARITECH GHANA LIMITED as exposed by Techfocus24?

We are sure the honourable members on the Public Accounts Committee will ask the critical questions. But those ten are some of the questions we expect GRA to provide Ghanaians answers to. We have very reliable information that Safaritech was imposed on GRA by the politicians, but it is up to them to admit or deny it.

Let me end by saying that a few years back, the most recent-past GRA Boss, Emmanuel Kofi Nti, told Adom News that the pressure on him to mobilize revenue to fund Free SHS was giving him sleepless nights. He told his truth and, not long after that comment, he was fired. It is up to the current GRA boss, who is a reverend minister, to also tell his truth and face the consequences. After all, he knows better than I do that the truth makes you free, and lies only open doors for curses.