C1 billion loss in revenue through fraudulent deals

The State has lost revenue amounting to one billion cedis through fraudulent clearance of goods from the Tema Port. Announcing this at the press conference in Tema on Friday, Colonel Benjamin Appiah-Asante, Deputy Commissioner of Custom, Excise and Preventive (CEPS) in-charge of Special Duties, said the culprits successfully outwitted customs officials by submitting fictitious clearance documents.

He said the deal was carried out within the past four years and the CEPS together with the security agencies have mounted a search for the prime suspect, Jacob Mensah Okwandaho, a resident of Tema Community Four. Some culprits have been prosecuted while others were still standing trial.

He appealed to the public to volunteer information about Mr Okwandaho, whose popularity encouraged him to contest the recent District Assembly Election in the Community Four Electoral Area.

The Deputy Commissioner said that from April this year, CEPS began intercepting fake entry documents used to clear goods from the Port.

The items were made up of used auto spare parts, used clothing, six vehicles that would have made the State to lose total revenue of 239.8 million cedis.

He said preliminary investigations into the case revealed that the importers had paid the required duties and taxes to the clearing agents to be paid to CEPS but the agents failed to pay up and so CEPS alerted the security agencies to help unravel the spate of fictitious documents that were being used to clear goods.

Based upon that, on August 31, 2002, Okwandaho's house was searched and a lot of items including customs/shipment documents, computers, receipt stamps and pictures of some suspects were found. Investigations revealed that, the culprits adopted fraudulent "flying entries" documents to clear various goods from the port causing the loss of revenue in respect of customs duties to the state.

They include 21 vehicles at a cost of 559.1 million cedis and other general goods that cost 503.8 million cedis within the same four-year period.

Col. Appiah-Asante said preliminary analysis of the documents in the custody of CEPS did not suggest the involvement of any CEPS officials in the deal.

"However, we can deduce from some of the documents scrutinised that they may have passed through the clearance procedure at the port sometime or the other".

He said that CEPS would be able to retrieve some of the loss revenue because they have the chassis number and documents of some of the vehicles that would facilitate the tracing of the users.

Mr W. K. Ankrah, Assistant Commissioner, in charge of Customs Long Room explained that to make their 'flying entries' genuine, a fake clearing agent cut the seals from old customs clearing papers and neatly pasted them on his entries.

This made it difficult for CEPS officers to detect the fake entries. "It is this modus operandi that he used to falsely climb an inch taller in this dubious trade," Mr Ankrah said.