Officials of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) on Thursday locked up the premises of African Automobile Limited in Accra for non-payment of taxes, totaling more than GHC6.4 million.

The special exercise, dubbed “VAT Distress Action”, is aimed at collecting outstanding debts from customers of the Service.

The GRA officials from the Debt Management and Compliance Enforcement Unit and personnel from the Police Service paid unannounced visits to two establishments.

Briefing journalists after the exercise, Mr Samuel Bentil, Chief Revenue Officer, said Databank and African Automobile owed a total of GHC8.23 million in unpaid taxes for over two years.

Data Bank Management Services promptly paid GHC800,000 as part of its debt of nearly GHC1.6 million, with a pledge to pay the remainder by the end of the month.

He said African Automobile Limited had been indebted to the GRA for a very long time and several attempts to collect the money had been fruitless.

Mr Bentil noted that the company’s failure to pay the outstanding arrears within two weeks would result in an auction of the assets to pay off the debt in line with the GRA Act.