'Operation Recover All Loot' protestors demand termination of SML deal

Members of ‘Operation Recover All Loot,’ have asked the finance minister to terminate immediately the consolidated contract awarded to the Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML) by the Ghana Revenue Authority.

Per the contract, the SML will monitor and audit Downstream Petroleum Sector (2019), Upstream Petroleum Production (2023) and Minerals and Metals Resources Value Chain (2023).

Meanwhile, the petitioners, including Mr Mahama Ayariga, MP for Bawku Central, said the SML deal was illegal, arguing for the GRA to enter into a financial deal with an entity without Parliamentary approval or legislation was unconstitutional.

He said the Revenue Agencies (Retention of Part of Revenue) Act, 2002, Act 628, gave the GRA the mandate to collect revenue and retain 3 per cent, and therefore GRA had no legal justification to go into an agreement for the entity to also benefit a percentage different from their 3 per cent.

“The funds are State monies and the GRA needs the State to pass a law authorizing them to mandate another entity to collect revenue and retain some percentage.” Mr Ayariga said.

He said: “We are not interested in whether proper accounting has been done or not. The issue is a legal one and let’s deal with it as to whether the GRA had the right to enter into that kind of agreement.”

The MP said KPMG’s report on the SML which had been published by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo did not focus on the legal issues.

Mr Osman Ayariga, Lead Convener and one of the petitioners, addressing the crowd, demanded that all illegal monies paid in the SML contract must be retrieved.

He also called on the Government to retrieve all monies that had been misappropriated and embezzled illegally in the $34 million Ambulance deal sooner than later.

“We are being shortchanged and as young men and women, our lives and future have been destroyed. We are therefore calling for investigation and prosecution of those involved in the Ambulance deal,” he said.

The Convener, together with other petitioners from the Movement for Change and the MP, presented the petition to Madam Eva Mends, Chief Director of the Ministry.

He added that there would be series of protests to the Jubilee House, the next move to have the petition delivered, two weeks from now.

Queenstar Kyerewa Animwaa, a protestor, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that she had been struggling to care for her three male children as the economic conditions had shrunk her small business and needed to vent her displeasure.