GRA to auction Ibrahim Mahama’s assets

The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has indicated that it will auction Ibrahim Mahama’s properties to retrieve monies owed it if he fails to honour his part of the bargain with the Authority.

According to the GRA, Ibrahim, brother of former President John Mahama, is indebted to the revenue collecting body to the tune of over GH¢16 million.

Robert Mensah, Assistant Commissioner for Communications at the GRA, who spoke to Joy FM, an Accra-based radio station yesterday, said a new settlement plan had been agreed upon by the two parties after several disappointments on the part of the former president’s brother.

Ibrahim Mahama is owner of MBG Limited, a heavy-duty equipment dealer and another company, Holman Brothers as well as Engineers and Planners, which got government’s juicy contracts on sole-sourcing basis under John Mahama, raising conflict of interest situations.

The companies are indebted to the GRA summarily to the tune of GH¢16.86 million.

According to Mr Mensah, Ibrahim Mahama had been asked by GRA to settle all debts owed the revenue agency in a matter of two weeks.

It falls in line with the same deadline given to him by EOCO which is probing his indebtedness to the state.

This is because the companies defaulted in the payment of duties they incurred on imports they made into the country since 2015.

MBG Limited owed GH¢13.15 million in duties and it was supposed to have paid up by November 2015.

Holman Brothers also owed an amount of GH¢3.71 million as of December 2015.

Under the immediate past arrangements, MBG Limited was supposed to make a monthly payment of GH¢800,000 from December 2016 to December 2017 while Holman Brothers was also supposed to pay GH¢192,000 monthly for 13 months to settle its indebtedness.

However, the two companies defaulted, hence the GRA’s decision to scrap the arrangement and demand full settlement of the indebtedness with interest. All the cheques given to GRA were bounced at the bank.

It would be recalled that the anti-graft agency – the Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO) – last week interrogated Mr. Ibrahim Mahama over some dud cheques issued for the payment of import duties to the GRA.

But Mr Mensah said he could not react to that matter specifically since the Authority did not initiate the investigations.

He, however, said GRA returned the cheques issued to it as part-payment for the companies’ debts, since it was discovered that the accounts from which the cheques were to have been debited had been closed.

Mr. Mensah explained that GRA acted lawfully by allowing the two companies to clear their goods from the ports and pay the duties later.