The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), has banned two clearing agents from transacting business with the authority.
The two are Vida Deganus, a freelance clearing agent and Nii Adjei Sowah, an employee of Fantegah Co. Ltd.
The two allegedly falsified the port loading document from India to other countries and under-declared the values. This cost Ghana some huge sums in tax revenue in August, last year.
This was found out after Fantegah Co. Ltd, a freight forwarder company was investigated over accusation from other freight forwarder companies that they had under-declared the values that cost the state some $384,754.83 in revenue.
The affected companies are Nasowah Enterprise, Abacus Digital Media Limited, Wayglow Enterprise, Too Smatt Enterprise and Dovis Clearing House Limited.
In an internal memo which directed for the licences of the freight forwarding companies to be revoked, it revealed that the falsified values were then presented to GRA for duty and tax purposes, leading to the loss of revenue.
The memo further indicated that companies and their clients involved in the alleged illegalities benefited.
The companies are Tobinco, Wimped Co. Limited, Open Heaven Manufacturing & Co. Ltd and Royal Gold.
The individual importers include Kwame Okyere, Faustina Osei Opoku and Justina Kuma.
But further investigations, proved that Vida Deganus and Nii Adjei Sowah, initiated the deal without the knowledge of the authority of Fantegah Co. Ltd.
The two persons have illegally cleared safety matches for two different importers – Kwesi Poku and Kwame Okyere on three different occasions. They declared that the goods, on one occasion, were from India and the rest were from China.
The GRA, memo, however, indicated that the ICEGATE platform showed that the port of loading for the goods was India. They consequently paid $26,000 as duties on the matches instead of $94,013.6.
GRA has banned the two persons involved from entering any Customs Division of the GRA office to transact business.
The licence of the company in question has subsequently been ratified and it has since started operating the freight business.
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