A year-long investigation by Evans Aziamor-Mensah, Adwoa Adobea-Owusu and Manasseh Azure Awuni of The Fourth Estate has revealed that Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited, with the help of a section of Ghana’s media, made false and unsubstantiated claims of its operations that have served as the basis for the hundreds of millions cedis it received from the government of Ghana. It appears the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) were aware the claims were false, for some officials of the GRA said they had confronted the company about its claims of savings and volumes on two separate occasions.
A few hours after the reporters confronted the management of SML with the findings of the investigation and asked for a response, the major services it claimed to render to the government disappeared from the company’s website.
The investigation also uncovered that at a time players in the downstream petroleum sector were questioning the relevance of SML’s involvement, the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori Atta, initiated a more outrageous deal that would entitle the company to over $100 million every year for the next 10 years.
EDITOR’S NOTE: After this publication, the GRA and SML have stated that the contract that was executed was for 5 years and not 10 years as we reported. After the subsequent social media sharing of some of the leaked documents we received from our anonymous sources, a one-page document purporting to be Page 13 of the executed contract has been published, which says the duration of the contract is 5 years, subject to another 5-year renewal. Even though the GRA and Ministry of Finance are yet to give us the contracts and documents we requested in our investigation, we wish to stick to 5 years as the duration of the contract. We, however, stand by the substance of our story.