Sahara Oil Caught In $48m TOR Fraud

As TOR Boss Sign Bogus Contract With Fake Refinee Petroplus
While Sahara Oil Team Up With State Security Officials To Cover Up

It is has now emerged from the corridors of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) that controversial Nigerian company, Sahara Oil is behind the phony firm, Refinee Petroplus, formed with the single purpose to fleece the Government of Ghana through the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) to a whopping sum of $48 million in a fraudulent oil deal.

After duping the state of the gargantuan amount, the fake Refinee Petroplus, together with its fraudsters, have succeeded in bringing on board their fraudulent deal, some officials of the national security and BNI in a desperate bid to cover up their scheme.

According to information gleaned from the BNI, Sahara Oil, knowing that it is not in the good books of the current government decided to form the fraudulent, Refinee Petroplus in order to outwit TOR to secure the 48-million-dollar deal, which involved the supply of 600,000 barrels of brass crude oil. This reason appears to have been accepted by the BNI, which has completed its investigations into the matter and submitted its report to the National Security. The Enquirer sources within the BNI, have confirmed that Petroplus Refinee is not a genuine company.

In swindling TOR of the $48million, Sahara oil got its Marketing Officer, Yvette Ayele Foli, to act as the Country Representative of the non-existent Refinee Petroplus B.V.I. Limited. The fraudsters then used on their fake documents, the logo of Petroplus Holdings, an internationally-recognised oil company based in Switzerland, to create an impression to TOR officials that the phony Refinee Petroplus is a subsidiary of the real Petroplus, which has never done business in Africa.

The Enquirer checks at the Registrar-General’s Department indicate Refinee Petroplus is not registered as a company in Ghana. The address used by the company is also fake. The false address is Refinee Petroplus B.V.I, William Theodore House,18 Josis boz Tito Avenue, Switch Back Road, Cantonments, Accra. Despite, the glaring evidence of falsifications, TOR disappointingly failed to do due diligence on the company and entered into a bogus Sales and Purchase Agreement (SPA) with the sham Refinee Petroplus on August 18, 2010. The contract, a copy of which is in the possession of The Enquirer was signed by Mr. Ato Ampiah, Acting Managing Director at TOR and Yvette Foli, the so-called country Representative of Refinee Petroplus.

A vital item missing in the SPA, is the banking details of the Seller (Refinee Petroplus) as well as the Buyer (TOR) of the 600,000 barrels of Brent crude oil. According to industry experts The Enquirer spoke to, it is unusual for the banking details of particularly the seller to be absent in the contract. This is because payment made on such transaction can only be made through the banks. The experts wonder how TOR paid the phony Refinee Petroplus. “Maybe Yvette Foli loaded the cash into articulator trucks into her home,” an expert jokingly told The Enquirer.

Another strange angle to the saga is that the contract was signed on the day the vessel arrived at the Tema Port with the product. According to the experts, this is outside the normally accepted practice which provides that the contract should have been signed long before the arrival of the vessel.

The experts explain that the seller should have gotten the buyer‘s consent for the supply of the product within an agreed time frame.

“You do not bring the product at the port, before you search for a buyer; oil is not like tomatoes, the more the oil stays in the vessel, the higher the cost,” the expert added.

Meanwhile, Sahara oil has brought back the picture of Yvette Foli on its website. The company removed the picture of its Marketing Executive last Wednesday, after learning of the scandal that was to hit the company as well as its employee, Yvette Foli.

The Enquirer deep throat sources in Sahara Oil has suggested that the company has probably revised its tactics and is determined with the help of some state security officials to defend the fraudulent deal at all costs, including the use of the media.

In a related development, the consortium claiming to be actual owners of the fraud-laden cargo of crude oil, has denied media reports that the oil it brought into the country for supply to TOR was Forcados Blend crude.

Dennis Cartar, an official of the consortium, comprising Maxigate Petroleum, Diamond Shipping and Bramits, insists that they supplied 600,000 barrels of brass crude oil to TOR but unfortunately they were swindled by some fraudsters within TOR and their agents within the private sector.

Indeed three companies are claiming ownership of the same product after TOR has taken delivery of the oil and made payment to that effect.

National Security Co-ordinator, Lt. Col. Larry Gbevlo-Lartey (Rtd), has however insisted that TOR did nothing wrong in performing the transaction with Refinee Petroplus.

Sahara Oil which is said to be linked with the former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo,started doing business in Ghana when it struck a lucrative deal with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government in 2001, assigning to it the monopoly of lifting the country’s crude oil from Nigeria.

Until the assumption of office of the Mills' administration, Sahara Oil was the sole supplier of crude oil to the Volta River Authority (VRA), in a deal that many industry experts have said left the country’s bulk power supplier paying more than what it could have got through competitive pricing. Sahara Oil is also said to have in its fold some bankrollers of the NPP flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.