Go after foreign businesses evading taxes - Allotey Jacobs tells government

Central Regional Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) wants government to with the same alacrity it pursued Ibrahim Mahama for the amount owed the state for heavy duty vehicles he imported into the country in 2015 , to go after a number of foreign companies operating in the country without paying taxes.

Mr Bernard Allotey Jacobs revealed that there are a number of foreign companies who have evaded tax for years yet government sits on the fence and allows such companies to repatriate their earnings to their home countries.

“Government has stooped so low in the case of Ibrahim Mahama and making politics out of an arrangement a private businessman had with a state institution. A lot of foreign businesses have evaded taxes but government does not pursue and arrest such persons but are only interested in someone whose company has employed over 2,000 just because his brother is a former president of the country”, he revealed.

According to him, the conduct of the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) smacks of witch-hunting calling on government not to always hide under EOCO to pursue a personal vendetta.

“EOCO is gradually becoming an institution used for witch-hunting when there is a change of government and I think it is fast losing its credibility and must be metamorphosed into either Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service or Bureau of National Investigations(BNI) because there seem to be a duplication of roles”, he observed.

He said EOCO is on the path of disgracing government in the case of Ibrahim Mahama calling for the dissolution of EOCO which he said is overstepping its bounds and veering into areas that are under their purview of state institutions.

“ The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has come out to indicate they have an arrangement so if he has in one way or the other faulted, the GRA has its own mechanisms in retrieving the amount owed to them”, he averred.