Special Operations Unit: A Timely Intervention

By Nana Akua Tweneboah-Koduah

For so many years, the government of Ghana has been bleeding severely following the unscrupulous and criminal behaviour of some customs examination officials who collude with importers to short-change the government at all the entry points. This criminal and reprehensive behaviour has seriously affected the cash flow into government coffers thus preventing the government of meeting its revenue targets year after year.

After the arrival of goods at the ports, customs examination officers are required to thoroughly examine the goods to ascertain the true value of import duties to be paid by the importers.

But that has not been the case! When importers feel that import duties levied on their imports are too high, many of them have resorted to three main tricks to beat the system. The first dodgy means is to collude with the customs officers to reclassify the goods to beat down the import duties.

For instance if importer A’s shoes are assessed and the total duty comes up to 10,000 Ghana Cedis, he/she may collude with an examination officer to reclassify the goods as perfumes or something else so as to attract a lower duty. This is purely done with the agreement that both the importer and the examination officer will scratch each other’s back at the expense of government.

Therefore, when the total duty of the reclassified goods comes up to 4,000 Ghana Cedis, the importer is made to part with say 2,000 Ghana Cedis as a “back scratching fee” to the examination officer and thus “save” 4,000 Ghana Cedis.

As a result of this bad and criminal behaviour the government ends up losing 6,000 Ghana Cedis on the imported shoes.

In the second felonious act, some unpatriotic customs officers brazenly underestimate the import duties of imported goods without reclassifying them. They have been in the system for a long time and know how to dribble their way through without detection. After the goods of the importers are undervalued, the customs officers pocket huge sums of money as “back scratching fees” which otherwise would have gone to government account.

The last but serious aberrant act is when the importer decides not to pay the assessed import duty and waits for the government to seize the goods for auction. It is at this point that the importer works his/her way through and purchase the auctioned goods at a relatively cheaper price thus making the government to lose heavily.

In an effort to stop these huge financial leakages at the ports and also seal the loopholes in tax collection at the various ports of entry, the Special Operations Unit (SOU) was established this year by the Presidency.

The SOU’s operations are mainly based on tip-offs from clearing agents, taxi drivers, and those who sell around the ports. When they move in they re-examine goods that have cleared the ports to ascertain the true value of import duties paid on those goods. The officers of the SOU also ensure that all the cleared goods and goods going to bonded warehouses are accompanied by true declaration forms.

Since the SOU started its operations cheating importers caught in underhand dealings have been slapped with penalties up to 300 per cent of the value of the goods. This has led the unit to recover over 100,000 Ghana Cedis on short collections plus penalties on imported goods.

Other importers whose goods were intercepted but were not accompanied to bonded warehouses by custom officers, national security and surveillance teams were made to pay about 132,000 Ghana Cedis before their goods were released unconditionally.

Close to 40 officers of the Customs, Excise and Preventive Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) who aided the importers to short-change the government in terms of duties paid have been cited for wrongdoing and would be handed over to the police for further investigations and prosecution.

The intervention by the SOU is very timely in view of the fact that there are so many leakages in the system which is seriously affecting government’s operations. People have always tagged politicians and government officials as being corrupt, but the corrupt behaviour of these customs officers which runs into millions of cedis annually is bleeding the government to death. This behaviour must stop because it is part of the national cake which is being loaded into individual pockets.

What is annoying is that it is these same corrupt customs officials and importers who will later turn round and accuse the government of doing little or nothing in terms of development. How can the government operate effectively and efficiently when it is being robbed of monies that should have accrued to its coffers?

Ghanaians should support the SOU to arrest and bring to book all these nation wreckers. We must never allow some few individuals to live fat on our monies. Already some individuals and some radio stations have started lambasting the SOU when in fact they do not know the true facts on the ground.

If you live in an area with bad roads, or no water or electricity, just think about corrupt importers and customs officers who are preventing you from receiving your fair share of the national cake in terms of these infrastructures.

nakuakoduah@yahoo.com