Illicit financial flows: Akufo-Addo to set up ‘tax-invading’ haven - TJC hints

Chairman of the Ghana Tax Justice Coalition, Vitus Azeem has hinted that the 6-month-old Akuffo-Addo led government is having a serious discourse on revisiting former President Kufour administration’s decision to set up an offshore banking facility in Ghana.

Mr. Azeem who described the banking facility as a tax haven said the move if implemented will worsen Ghana’s lost to illicit financial flows amidst the myriad challenges including corruption and looting of public resources.

‘It is very sad to note that the current NPP government is revisiting the Kufour administration’s decision to set up an offshore facility in Ghana, a form of tax haven’.

Speaking at the 2017 World Public Service Day 2017 organised by the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) in Accra, the Mr. Azeem said the facility will stash away outside the country in tax havens and Illicit financial flows by multinational companies.

In September 2007 the then President John Agyekum Kufour launched an in-Country Offshore Banking Services in Accra.

The facility, a joint venture of Ghana and the Barclays Bank, is the first of its kind to be established in West Africa and is seen as an important step towards the realization of the Government's vision of making the country a major financial hub of the Sub-Region.

The facility which failed to see the light of day was intended to provide banking services to non-resident customers by creating a portfolio of assets and liabilities and other investment products.

According to Mr. Azeem the facility would have encouraged tax evasion, urging the current government to desist from implementing such a plan.

Mr. Azeem’s call comes at the time when Ghana is losing more than a billion dollars illicitly through transfer pricing, undervaluing of imports and overvaluing of exports, among others, and the merger of the various revenue agencies