It Is Bribery, Mr. Spio-Garbrah!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

June 28, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I wrote about the Bankswitch Ghana Limited judgment-debt saga awhile back, and so when it suddenly re-emerged in the media, I was not quite on top of things. I had nearly totally forgotten about this whole criminally infantile and vindictive mess created by the Mills-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The former University of Ghana's Tax-Law Professor has ascended - I hope - into eternity for nearly three years now, but his morally stultifying legacy is still with us. Ghana must deservedly pay for its retrogade leadership until we learn what it means to live in the cosmopolitan global community, and also wise up to the need to let principles and patriotism, rather than raw emotions, guide our leadership.

Well, for those who may have so soon forgotten about the scandalous Bankswitch Affair, it had to do with the contracting of a high-end technology firm by the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to enable the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA)maximize its capacity to rake in the desired tax revenue on exports and imports. We are also told that at the time of its contractual agreement with Bankswitch, a multinational corporation, Ghana already had some five other firms, including one called GCNET, or Ghana Community Network Services Limited, working at the country's ports. President John Agyekum-Kufuor must have genuinely felt the need to enter into a contractual agreement with a more efficient imports- and exports assaying firm.

The problem here, though, regards why Mr. Kufuor waited from 2000, when he was elected President of the Republic of Ghana, until 2007, when he was decidedly a lame-duck President, to enter into an agreement with Bankswitch. The entire deal reeks of a preemptive blow to the erstwhile Mills-Mahama government. One can only speculate what an Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party government would have done about the Bankswitch contract entered into by his former boss and predecessor. Alas, we can only ineffectually speculate, because Akufo-Addo lost the 2008 presidential election to the then-Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills, late, some say, with the hearty blessings of President Kufuor.

As a Tax-Law Professor at the country's flagship academy, the University of Ghana, and former Head of the Ghana Revenue Authority, one would have expected the now-late President Mills to have fully appreciated the implications and impact of his decision to summarily abrogate Bankswitch's contract with his predecessor. And if he had been of the firm conviction that the contractual agreement with Bankswitch had been entered into under shady circumstances, President Mills could have sued to have President Kufuor subpoenaed either before the courts or parliament to give a defensive account of the deal. It was not the business of President Mills to conclude on behalf of the legislature, that the deal was illegal because it had not been approved by parliament. Our legislators were capable of speaking for themselves.

Understandably livid for having been dishonorably and disdainfully given the heave-ho, the key operatives of Bankswitch sued the government in The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration and handily won the judgment-debt sum of GHC 197 million last year. We are told that either the failure or flat refusal of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress has resulted in a punitive ballooning of the debt which, if not satisfied in the offing, could well result in the Ghanaian taxpayer's being forced to foot a whopping bill of GHC 1 Billion. This is where Mr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Ghana's new Trade and Industry Minister, comes in.

According to Mr. Spio-Garbrah, Ghana's former Ambassador to the United States, it was the abject failure of the extant Ministers of Trade and Industry, Finance, and the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice to appear at The Hague to vigorously defend the interests of Ghana that resulted in the albatross of GHC 197 million presently hanging around the necks of Ghanaian taxpayers (See "Bankswitch Saga: Ministers' Laxity Caused Judgment Debt" The Chronicle 6/28/15). Mr. Spio-Garbrah's solution to the problem has been to literally blackmail and strong-arm the five tax-collecting companies at our ports to come up with $35 million (Thirty-Five Million U.S. Dollars) a piece to liquidate the judgment-debt which none of the operatives of these so-called Destination Inspection Companies (DICs) racked up through either flagrant dereliction of duty or gross administrative incompetence, or lose the renewal of their contracts.

Not surprisingly, some ardent critics of the Mahama government have called the Spio-Garbrah Debt-Liquidation Plan "cold-blooded bribery." The new Trade and Industry Minister has fired back by insisting that his plan is no bribery scam but the most pragmatic way of cleaning up the mess left behind by "some evil politicians" with vested interest in Bankswitch's judgment-debt windfall. He has also dared his critics to cite any law on the books that criminalizes his patent extortion scam, or attempt thereof. What one sees here is a quixotic attempt on the part of Mr. Spio-Garbrah to push the already scalded hand of the Ghanaian taxpayer from the skillet into the flames. It is also quite certain that Mr. Spio-Garbrah expects the nation's import and export firms to pick up after the willful and criminally gross incompetence of our leaders. This is simply not right! Heads must roll and assets and properties seized, pronto!

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