Information available to The Catalyst indicates that some fish importers at the Tema Fishing Harbour have allegedly defrauded the nation to the tune of over 5 Million Ghana Cedis or 50 billion old cedis by falsifying trade documents, thereby evading appropriate taxes and charges.

The importers, who changed port of lading from Mauritania and Guinea to read Namibia and obtained lower values from Gateway Services Ltd (GSL) instead of BIVAC Ghana Ltd., include Nayak Fisheries Ltd, Paradise Fisheries Ltd, Fasonhog Foods Ltd, Trading FM Ltd, El Shadai Fisheries Ltd., among others.

According to sources, in 2008, the authorities detected some malfeasance in the industry and subsequently the Audit Team conducted Post Clearance investigations into the imports of the suspected companies from January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2007. It was therefore detected that trade documents used in clearing some consignments of fish imported by the companies and cleared by the their declarants as per their attached bill of lading numbers and declaration numbers, were falsified thus, changing the port of loading from Nouadhibou, Mauritania to read Walvis Bay, Namibia.

The Catalyst learnt that fish from certain countries attract less charges than others and because Namibia falls under those with less charges, the listed fish importers changed the documents from Mauritania, which falls under the category of high tariffs to Namibia. To ensure that this rule is adhered to, different entities were assigned to take care of fish imports from specific countries. As a result, their bills were under-valued to the tune of over 50 billion Ghana Cedis.

Instead of BIVAC Ghana Ltd, Gateway Services Ltd (GSL) was used for the clearance as per the countries indicated on the documents.

When the deals were detected, BIVAC Ltd was asked to re-assess the transactions that involved seven (7) ships within the period, using the lowest exchange rate of $1=0.9148 old Cedis.

Interestingly, when the various importers were issued with a demand notice to pay the difference on their transactions, The Catalyst learnt that one Mr. Kofi Brako of Teamwork Freight Services Ltd. an NPP stalwart, is alleged to have used his connections in the then ruling NPP to stall the execution of that order. Further investigations and enforcement of the law were stalled by “the powers that be.”

This gave the erring companies the leeway to continue with their business, denying the nation of revenue to the tune of over 50 billion old cedis. Stay tuned.