Presidential task force to check fraud at ports suspended
The presidential task force set up by the President to retrieve millions of revenue lost to the state from clearing agents and importers through import fraud has been suspended pending a review to expand its mandate to include recovering monies from other agencies defrauding the state.
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Code-named the Special Operations Unit (SOU), the task force, which was under the direct supervision of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Mr Johnny Osei Kofi, during its operations, managed to intercept a number of fraudulent activities at the various ports which earned the country millions of Ghana cedis.
Task force review
A source at the Flagstaff House told the Daily Graphic that the government was reviewing the mandate of the SOU to give it a more elaborate direction by clothing it with the necessary authority to go beyond recovering money from only the ports.
Officials of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service were engaged by the SOU to prosecute clearing agents who defrauded the state to the tune of GH¢38 million.
Scores of clearing agents, together with their importers, have been found to have engaged in Final Customs Verification Report (FCVR) fraud which involved fictitiously altering the payment of the original import duty to pay a lesser amount by way of forged receipts.
The state, through the SOU, in October last year recovered GH¢780,000 by intercepting containers of cooking oil through acts of fraud perpetrated by importers at the Tema Port.
Fourteen containers of Hayat vegetable cooking oil were undervalued on arrival but investigations by the SOU revealed that instead of the total duty of GH¢898,385.80, the importers rather paid GH¢118,731.23.
But for the vigilance of the SOU, the state would have incurred a loss of GH¢779,654.57.
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Modus operandi
The Daily Graphic gathered that others had been found to have either failed to pay port permits or abused the system. The unpaid permits are a special dispensation established for state agencies to expedite the clearance of goods from the port even before effecting payments.
It was further gathered that some of the agents, after clearing the goods, failed to return to complete the necessary documentation for payments to be made.
Customs Act
The amount owed the state by importers includes a 300 per cent penalty on the defrauded amount following the introduction of the new Customs Act 891, 2015.
According to the act, “A person who counterfeits, falsifies or wilfully uses a counterfeited or falsified certificate or document required by this act under the directions of the Commissioner-General in the transaction of any business commits an offence and the person shall incur a penalty of not more than 300 per cent of the amount not paid, in addition to forfeiture of the goods, where applicable.”