How Akufo-Addo government hounded Domelevo but let GRA boss stay on without contract after retirement

In June 2020, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo asked then Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelevo, to proceed on his accumulated annual leave of 123 days.

The leave order, as indicated in a letter signed by the Director of Communications at the Office of the President, Eugene Arhin, was to take effect from July 1, 2020.

Some people have gone as far as saying the way the government handled the Domelevo issue was witch hunting, aimed at ensuring that then Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, was shielded from being investigated on the Kroll and Associates matter.

A year after (2021), in October, the current Commissioner of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Rev. Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, turned 60 years and miraculously, he has still been at post since then.

During the parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) sitting on Monday, January 30, 2024, after a question was asked of his age, the GRA boss admitted that he turned 62 in October 2023.

He further admitted that since his retirement, he has remained at post without any official contract to that effect.

On the issue of whether his current employment status was on contractual basis having obtained the 60 years retirement age, the GRA boss said "Mr Chairman, as far as I know, a letter was sent to the board for me to continue working until it is sorted out with the Ministry of Finance and the appointing authority."

In between that, there have been other cases like that of the former Commissioner of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Colonel Kwadwo Damoah, who was sacked by President Nana Akufo-Addo over the expiration of his contract and having still been at post after his retirement age.

But this particular instance is not as similar as the cases of Daniel Yao Domelevo and Rev. Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah. And here is how.

The Domelevo case:

For those who may have forgotten, all of the troubles that Daniel Domelevo, the former Auditor-General encountered in the last days of his tenure in that office, started when he became a vocal critic of the government and its handling of corruption-related issues.

In one of Daniel Yao Domelevo’s usual comments on issues of corruption in the country, while addressing the third Bi-Annual Conference of Regional Auditors in Ho, held under the theme: “In the Era of Disallowance and Surcharge, the Role of the Regional Auditors,” he said corruption was gradually being accepted as a yardstick for success.

He also warned that its gravity on the public service in particular was sending the nation closer to the edge and must be stopped.

But more importantly, some members of the National Democratic Congress believed that the move to get Domelevo out was a strategy by the government to shield then Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo from being investigated on the Kroll and Associates matter.

The former A-G, Daniel Yao Domelevo was against the move by the government to pay US$1 million to Kroll and Associates.

Acting on behalf of the government, the Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, signed a deal with Kroll and Associates for a value-for-money audit of some projects, identify wrongdoers and recover the assets of the said wrongdoers.

But after an audit of that deal subsequently, the Auditor-General concluded that Kroll and Associates had been paid $1 million for no work done.

Domelevo then surcharged the Senior Minister, the four officials of the Ministry of Finance and Kroll and Associates GH¢5,510,353.73.

Subsequently, Osafo-Maafo and the officials of the Ministry of Finance, in 2019, dragged the Auditor-General to the High Court and prayed the court to set the surcharge aside.

They took the view that the Auditor-General came to a wrong conclusion when he said there was no work done by Kroll and Associates.

All of these issues, plus a resolve by Domelevo not to back down on calling out corruption in the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government, are believed to have led to the series of issues that eventually got the former A-G out.

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The Ammishaddai case:

Yet, in the case of the current Commissioner of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Rev. Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, nothing wrong has been seen of his continuous stay in office since he officially clocked the retirement age of 60 in 2021.

In the period, he has continued to stay at post, without any official contract extension and now, he is at the center of one of the biggest controversial contracts signed on behalf of the government.

In a thefourthestateghana.com report, it turned out that an amount of GH¢3 billion was paid by the government, to a company called Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML) at a time “when superior and comprehensive measures had already been introduced by the government in 2018 to curtail losses in the downstream petroleum sector.”

The company is also reported to have been receiving up to GH₵24 million monthly payments from the government of Ghana in a questionable contract it signed with the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), where Rev. Dr Owusu-Amoah has been heading.

Both the GRA and SML came out to justify the agreements that bind the two entities.

SML has stated that its upstream operations have not commenced, and therefore, no revenue has been generated. The company pointed out that the $100 million per year payment allegation is entirely fictional.

Meanwhile, Bright Simons, a vice president of IMANI Africa, has indicated that the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has defied the order of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to stop the operationalisation of its contract with Strategic Mobilization Ghana Ltd (SML).

President Akufo-Addo tasked KPMG to audit the transaction between the GRA and SML where the latter was expected to provide revenue assurance services in the downstream petroleum sector, the upstream petroleum production and minerals and metals resources value chain.

The president, in a statement issued on January 2, 2024, directed the Ministry of Finance and the GRA to suspend the performance of the contract, pending the submission of the audit report, including any payments presently envisaged under its terms.

The verdict now rests in two direct questions: why is the Ammishaddai case any different, and how will the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government respond to its handling of both cases now?

AE/SEA