Next NDC gov’t will not accept any SML agreement – John Mahama

The flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, has condemned the revenue assurance contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) Ghana.

He says, if he is elected to form the next government of Ghana, he will ensure that SML is held accountable for all the monies it has received under the contract.

“An NDC government under me (John Mahama) will not recognise or accept this SML agreement,” he said in a speech in Koforidua at the start of a tour of the Eastern Region.

“Parliament is investigating it. The president has hurriedly gone to get KPMG to come and audit it. Whatever audit they do, I say we won’t accept or respect any agreement with SML. And for the money that they have taken already, we will hold them to account for that money,” he added.

Mr Mahama said with so many corruption allegations cropping up in the country, Ghanaians have become numb to allegations of corruption under the Akufo-Addo government.

“You cannot fleece a country like this,” he said. “One would have thought that the corruption cases were enough but it’s even made Ghanaians numb. Even in the twilight when you are exiting office, you are still coming up with schemes to steal Ghanaians’ money.”

His comments follow the release of an investigative report by The Fourth Estate on the contract between GRA and SML.

The report revealed that SML Ghana won the sole-sourced contract though it had no prior experience in revenue assurance. The company had no evidence to back its claim that it had saved the nation from potential revenue losses amounting to GHS3 billion cedis.

Since the release of the expose’, several actors in the extractive industry have condemned the contract agreement with the Executive Director of Africa Centre for Energy Policy describing it as “needless”.

The GRA has been the only customer of SML Ghana since its establishment and SML’s Managing Director, Mr Christian Tetteh Sottie, who was the technical advisor to the Commissioner-General of the GRA, left that position in 2020 to manage SML Ghana when the company started implementing the contract with the GRA.

The Fourth Estate’s investigations also detailed the circumstances surrounding the signing of an expanded consolidated contract worth nearly USD100 million a year for revenue assurance in the upstream petroleum and gold mining sectors.

Meanwhile, the audit firm, KPMG, is expected to present its audit report on the SML contract to President Nana Akufo-Addo on February 23, 2024.