“As we speak, the boss has ordered for 1,800 vehicles. It is being procured from a company called Dextro Impex. If you have vehicles sitting there and you are saying that they are expensive and you cannot give it out to members, how come you are finding money to go and buy 1,800 vehicles of 2011 model to give it out to people,” he insisted on Citi FM’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue on Saturday.

[contextly_sidebar id=”XJOBnduZ5zhpKcLlVuXpjbNpB8QHCqKw”]But the current deputy CEO for MASLOC, who was also speaking on The Big Issue rejected the claim saying “it is not true.”

“There is so much debt to be cleared and that is our focus. We have no money and we don’t even have any agreement,” she added.

350 abandoned vehicles

MASLOC is currently in the news for procuring some 350 vehicles meant for drivers belonging to the GPRTU, but were rejected by the union because it was said to be “too expensive.”

MASLOC was established primarily to provide micro and small loans for start-ups and small businesses to enable them to grow and expand.

In the past few years, it has been involved in the sale of cars on credit to individuals and groups including Members of Parliament, musicians and celebrities; however, it is challenged with retrieving the monies owed it.

Some have viewed it as a business that ends up rewarding political party members.

The management of MASLOC has so far confiscated 350 of such vehicles, and is currently in the process of retrieving the monies believed to be over GHc100 million.

–

By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

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According to him, Subah won the contract because it has the ability and capacity to deliver.

Speaking on an Accra based  Joy FM‘s news analysis show, Newsfile, Mr. Odade said his outfit  is capable of  executing the contract and has therefore not broken any law in bidding to supply the motorbikes for the project.

“All we keep saying is that Subah did not go for motorbikes. Subah went for a package which included motorbikes. I think that we should go beyond that …there may be documentation to prove that this might not be the issue,” he said.

The I.T company has been in the news for winning a bid from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to supply motorbikes for the street naming exercise.

Some have questioned whether Subah Infosolutions, an IT company  qualifies to win a contact that has nothing to do with technology.

But speaking for the first time, an official of the company said: ”Subah did not go for only motorbikes because if it were only motorbikes, somebody else could have done it. That was where the other IT equipment came in so there was a reason why some of these things were not there,” he explained.

He insisted that ”Subah got the deal because it had the capacity to deliver”.

Street Naming Company Limited  and Subah Infosolutions Company Limited are  both subsidiaries of the Jospong Group of Companies.

Deputy Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Baba Jamal on Friday told Citi News, his outfit followed due process in awarding the contract to the I.T firm.

Justifying the contract to Subah on the Citi Breakfast Show, Baba Jamal said the company satisfied all requirements during the tendering process.

He clarified that Subah was only contracted to supply motorbikes “and that is the only thing they are supplying.”

By: Evans Effah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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He has also admonished government to reorder full investigations into the deal between RAGB and SUBAH which has created public uproar.

Atik Mohamed at a news conference on Wednesday May 21, 2014 further suggested the need to terminate the Service Agreement between SUBAH and the RAGB.

It would be recalled that Subah Infosolutions was contracted by the Ghana Revenue Authority  in 2010 to provide telecom traffic monitoring services for revenue verification for the tax agency.

It was primarily set up to take up the telecom monitoring contract and the money that came with it.

Earlier reports indicated that the said deal earned the Information Technology firm GH¢74.3 million Ghana Cedis.

Later, several individuals and institutions raised eyebrows on the deal and called for investigations.

Also, a ranking Member of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei requested the Minister of Finance, Mr. Seth Terkper to furnish the house with further and better particulars detailing the business agreement between an IT firm, Subah Info solutions Limited and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to enable it have a better understanding of the contract.

The controversial agreement between the two entities, according to the committee was not known to Parliament, hence its request for the details.

A government committee was set up to investigate the alleged payment of GHC144 million to Subah Info Solutions Ghana Limited by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) for no work done.

At the end of the investigations, the committee’s report implied that the contract was legally awarded and that Subah Info Solutions Limited deserved the monies paid to them.

The report also said Subah justifiably incurred cost in executing the contract for which reason it was paid 74.3 million cedis contrary to the reported 144 million cedis for services rendered.

However, the report admitted that Subah failed to fully execute its contract but blamed this on the unwillingness of Telecom companies to allow Subah to attach equipment that will independently monitor revenue declared.

This explained why the Mass Action Committee has advocated the need to re-investigate the deal.

Below is the full statement:

PRESS RELEASE ON SUBAH INFO SOLUTIONS AND THE TECHNICAL COMMITTEE’S REPORT

Mass Action Committee (MAC) has noted with great deal of disquiet, the outcome of the Technical Committee’s work in respect of the Service Agreement and the execution thereof between REVSOL/SUBAH INFOSOLUTIONS LTD and the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) acting on behalf of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning on 5th May 2010. It will be recalled that, there was public outcry about the propriety of the contract and the loss of huge sums of money to SUBAH INFOSOLUTIONS. In response, the Minister of Finance in 2013 set the Technical Committee up to investigate the claims made against SUBAH in the execution of their contract. It is important to underscore the fact that, these investigations were expected to ascertain whether Government of Ghana was getting value for money in its dealings with SUBAH.

It is against this backdrop that, the committee’s report leaves us with no option but conclude that it did a deliberately poor job with the intent to exonerate REVSOL/SUBAH INFOSOLUTIONS and thus give them the official blessing to comfortably enjoy their loot.

THE SERVICE AGREEMENT

A careful study of how SUBAH’s services were procured shows that, this whole transaction was carried out in bad faith. And as a consequence, Ghanaians were short changed. Contrary to the expectation that the Revenue Agencies Governing Board, would request proposals from prospective companies with expertise in Revenue Assurance Monitoring through competitive bidding,  it was they(SUBAH)  in a typical GYEEDA fashion who presented a proposal to the RAGB and the Ministry of Finance in 2009 for the provision of this service.

Whereupon, the RAGB accepted the proposal and on 4th January, 2010 wrote to MOFEP for approval and authorization. Strangely however, the Minister in approving the proposal indicated in his letter dated 3rd Feb 2010, that the service be sole-sourced as per section 40(1) e of the procurement Act.

What is intriguing and mind boggling is the fact that, the kind of service SUBAH was expected to offer hardly fits into this particular provision. The provision in question relates to conditions under which single-sourcing is permissible and reads “where the procurement entity seeks to enter into a contract with the supplier or contractor for research, experiment, study or development except where the contract includes the production of goods in quantities to establish commercial viability or recover research and development costs”. Several attempts by the Mass Action Committeeto find our heads around how the service in question could possibly pass the test of this provision have been unsuccessful.

By limiting the procurement of this all important service to just SUBAH, Ghana lost the benefit of alternative offers with the twin prospects of better cost and higher expertise.

What is even more ludicrous and heart breaking is that, some portions of the Service Agreement itself especially Article 5 which relates to fees.RAGB is required to pay SUBAH 13.5% of incremental revenue accrued from Communications Service VAT/NHIL and Communication Service Tax. Beyond the fact that 13.5% is unreasonable, it is calculated on additional tax revenue beyond the average monthly collection – which is the ratio of aggregate CST and VAT declared and accounted for by Service Providers since the inception of the CST in 2008 to the month before the commencement of SUBAH’s work and the number of months thereof.

What this means is that, whether the increase in tax revenue is the result of SUBAH’s work or not, it is entitled to take 13.5% in so far as the increase goes beyond the “current average monthly collection” threshold. To this extent, the Service Agreement as it was so fashioned, positioned SUBAH in the best stead to potentially reap where it certainly did not sow.Only a contract with the intention to defraud can contain these incensing terms.

What is even more worrying is the fact that, Where no incremental revenue accrues in a particular month, the Agreement mandates RAGB to still pay “almighty SUBAH” 1% of the average monthly collection. In effect, whether SUBAH works or sleeps, it is still entitled as per the Agreement to share our taxes with us.

It is instructive to mention that, in most cases where private entities are contracted to provide Revenue Assurance Monitoring, they are paid percentages on the differentials between tax deposits and true tax uncovered through the work of the contractor. So that, where incremental tax revenue is not the function of the contracted entity’s efforts, it fails to profit from it. In the case of RAGB and SUBAH, it is more of a legally binding invitation from the former to the latter to share our communication tax revenues for pretending to be doing something when indeed it is doing NOTHING!

To make matters even worse, this Agreement has a life span of five years which gives SUBAH enough time to exploit this porous Agreement to amass as much loot as they possibly can.

POOR EXECUTION OF CONTRACT AND RECEIPT OF FREE MONEY FOR DOING NOTHING

The mandate of SUBAH is found in Article 4 of the Agreement. It is to among other things report on total revenues generated in a month, details of all calls of a particular number, tax differential reports, subscriber base of operators and total minutes at given periods. The essence is to reduce tariff and traffic fraud which lead to tax revenue loss by government.

To do this, SUBAH was required to independently monitor traffic volume and pricing of mobile and fixed telephony by connecting monitoring devices to the physical network nodes of service providers. Unfortunately, SUBAH did not do this. Rather it depended on CDRs presented by Service Providers to NCA for their work. And claim they analyzed the CDRs to ascertain whether the telecos were under declaring taxes or not-a situation according to them led to increases in tax revenue for the Ghana Revenue Authority.

We find this joke unacceptable as it did not give GRA any assurance that the telecos were fully declaring taxes due the state. Data on the CDRs presented by the telecos were their discretion and so they could under declare without SUBAH knowing because it had no means of verification and thus the purpose of the Agreement with SUBAH would be defeated. The claim by SUBAH that they used Revenue Assurance Software to analyze the CDRs is unsustainable as the software is only good to the degree that it is limited to the CDRs. In point of fact, the Performance Evaluation Report on Local Call MonitoringSeptember 2013, indicated that SUBAH monitoring operations were limited to only obtaining CDRs provided by operators which were subject to manipulation. Hence, there was no “complete visibility of operators’ actual revenues”.

Despite this non-performance, GRA went ahead to recommend payment of huge sums of money as fees to SUBAH. A major justification for these payments was that, there has been a surge in incremental revenues over the period since SUBAH began its work in 2010. This by all accounts is untrue. The increase in CST and the Communication Service VAT/NHIL is largely because of the increase in the subscriber base of mobile and fixed telephony. SUBAH’s work as clearly explained, has neither reduced revenue loss from tariff fraud nor has it reduced traffic volume manipulation.

Some of these outrageous payments could be as much as 12,558,019.00 within four months (May-August, 2012 for example and approval was given on 20th May 2013 by the Finance Minister).

THE TECHNICAL COMMITTEE’S REPORT

It is our view that, the committee’s report is an attempt to whitewash the SUBAH deal and give it legitimacy and by extension the monies they have undeservedly taken. The bit about whether the RAGB had the mandate to enter into a contract with SUBAH or not is for us is not much of a problem. Indeed, what is of utmost concern to Ghanaians is whether we had value for money in respect of SUBAH’s operations. From what has been mentioned above, we did not!

And so, we find it reprehensible that a committee set up and financed with our money will produce such results as to make it possible for 74m GHS of taxes to be leaked into a private pocket. As for the so called negotiated 1% reduction in SUBAH’s “earnings” as compensation for their inability to connect their devices to the nodes of the operators and monitor traffic and prices is the worst joke. The main thrust of SUBAH’s mandate is to be able to report accurate data on traffic volume and so on for the purpose of having accuracy and visibility of actual tax revenue deposits by the telecos.

Therefore, failure to do this which the committee itself admits, SUBAH does not deserve even a penny. And should have been made to refund every pesewa taken from our communication taxes.

To this end, we are calling on the President and Government to do the following:

·       Reject the committee’s report

·       Reorder full investigations into the whole RAGB and SUBAH deal

·       Suspend the Chairman of the RAGB

·       terminate the Service Agreement between SUBAH and the RAGB

Beyond these immediate measures, we are also entreating the Ghana Revenue Authority to consider the possibility of setting up a specialized unit solely dedicated to the monitoring of communication tax revenue. This unit should be given all the technical support and capacity to be able to carry out proper revenue assurance exercises. Alternatively, where the GRA still feels it is cost-efficient to outsource this service, it must be done on the basis of competitive bidding.

We wish to state emphatically that, a major part of our economic challenges is low tax revenue receipts. This recognition has led Government to introduce all kinds of new taxes and increased the rates of existing ones. Therefore every effort must be made to safeguard the little that accrues and prevent some individuals from deliberately siphoning it into private pockets. This effort is our collective responsibility and Mass Action Committee will go every length to ensure that.

In this regard, we are giving Government a one month ultimatum to do what we have mentioned above. Failure to do this will leave us with no option but exploit every available legitimate means to protect our taxes which we pay for the most part through our noses.

God Bless Ghana

SIGNED:

Atik Mohammed (Spokesperson)

By: Abdul Karim Naatogmah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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“Some of the content of the report are incorrect and those content are fundamental to the conclusion drawn about the future of Subah’s work,” he said.

His comment follows criticisms by some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) about the composition of the technical committee which according to them affected the outcome of the committee’s investigations.

The chairman of the committee, Dr. Edward Siaw defended the composition of the committee and also refuted claims that the report was a sham.

Government in November 2003 set up a technical committee to review and renegotiate the service agreement between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Subah InfoSolutions which saw the payment of an alleged GHC 144 million for no work done; an allegation the committee discounted.

The GRA contracted Subah to electronically monitor domestic call data records (CDRs) of the telecommunication companies in the country to enable the GRA collect appropriate taxes from the telcom companies.

Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, Mr. Sakyi Addo denied sections of the report which indicated that the telecom companies denied Subah the request to undertake an electronic monitoring, “that is not correct.”

“He disclosed that Subah was not introduced to the telecom companies by the GRA until October 28th, 2013 ‘but they were being paid already since 2010.”

He also revealed that Subah’s mandate was to work on domestic traffic in relation to communication service tax but they rather worked on international traffic after they acquired the call data records given to the National Communications Authority (NCA) by the telcos.

He therefore concluded that from all indications, Subah is either “irredeemably incompetent…or that they are fatally fraudulent…that is a problem.”

The Telecom Chamber boss lamented over the failure of the technical committee to invite the telcos to seek first hand clarification on the matter.

“If they did not do electronic monitoring and if they did not analyze call data records relating to their mandate, then what did they do to be paid GHC 74 million?” he asked.

According to him, his outfit has been cooperating with Subah as an agent of the GRA for auditing purposes adding that Subah was mandated to audit telcos “and it’s about integrity, it’s about the integrity of the signatory that says that these accounts are clean, these records are clean and so for us, we are concerned that the audit that will be done on telcos by Subah may not be credible.”

Click on link below to listen to Kwaku Sekyi Addo

By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @osamidan

The post Subah is ”irredeemably incompetent or fatally fraudulent” – Telecoms Chamber appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Some social commentators and Civil Society Organization (CSOs) have raised serious concerns over the composition of the technical committee which was set up by government.

It was made up of representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the GRA, the National Communications Authority (NCA), the Attorney General (AG) and Subah Info-Solutions.

The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) says the institutions represented on the committee were one way or the other, linked to the case, therefore, their findings and recommendations cannot be trusted.

The chairman, Dr. Edward Siaw on Eyewitness News insisted “it is not a sham, we did a professional job and when the report went, it was looked at, it was referred to other government agencies and then government accepted it.”

He also denied reports that Subah had a representation on the committee explaining that, the three representatives from Subah only sat in the committee’s meetings during the re-negotiating of the contract between Subah and the GRA.

“They were party to the contract so that is when they came but on the other issues, like the validity of the contract, they were not part,” he clarified.

He stressed that it was imperative for the representatives of Subah to be present at the re-negotiating of the contract and therefore, there is no case of conflict of interest.

Mr. Siaw admitted working closely with the GRA through the Finance Ministry as a Tax Policy Consultant but vehemently denied any case of another conflict of interest in the investigations of the technical committee.

“I can assure you, I am a professional and I know what a conflict is and what is not a conflict,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mary Adams of the GII observed that despite the explanations being given by Mr. Siaw, “there is a case of serious conflict of interest in connection with the chairperson of the committee.”

She called for the setting up of a new committee to conduct another investigation into the Subah-GRA deal “so that we will get better results because, what we fed into the system is what we got back.”

According to her, Ghana is having serious challenges in dealing with matters of corruption “and so if we have had the opportunity and government is supposed to show commitment, we believe this is not the right way at all.”

Background

In November 2013, government constituted a technical committee to investigate a contract agreement between the GRA and Subah Info-solutions after news broke that the GRA had paid huge amounts of money to Subah for no work done.

Subah was contracted by the GRA to electronically monitor domestic call data records (CDRs) of the telecommunication companies in the country to enable the GRA collect appropriate taxes from the telcom companies.

The technical committee was to review and renegotiate the service agreement between the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) and Subah Info-solution.

The committee’s report on the matter described the Subah-GRA contract as valid and can herefore, not be set aside.

The report also discounted earlier claims that the GRA paid GHC 144 million to Subah for services rendered within three years but clarified that an amount of GHC 74 million was rather paid.

But there is widespread dissatisfaction with the work of the committee.

By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @osamidan

 

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The Executive Director of the GII, Vitus Azeem told Citi News, the institutions represented on the committee were one way or the other, linked to the case “and when you constitute these people in the committee to investigate themselves, I don’t know what else anybody would have expected…it was a waste of time.”

Government in 2013 set up a technical committee to investigate an agreement between the GRA and Subah Info-solutions after news broke that the GRA had paid huge amounts of money to Subah for no work done.

Subah was contracted by the GRA to electronically monitor domestic call data records (CDRs) of the telecommunication companies in the country to enable the GRA collect appropriate taxes from the telcom companies.

The technical committee was to review and renegotiate the service agreement between the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) and Subah Info-solution.

It was made up of representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the GRA, the National Communications Authority (NCA), the Attorney General (AG) and Subah Info-Solutions.

The report among other things said, GHC 74 million was paid to Subah-Info-solutions instead of the reported GHC 144 million for services rendered within three years.

Earlier investigations however revealed, Subah was paid GHC 144 million for no work done; a claim the committee rebuffed.

According to the GII, the committee failed to look at other aspects of the contract apart from establishing the legitimacy of the board chairman of GRA to sign the contract.

The committee in its report stated that the contract agreement between the two institutions cannot be set aside, but the GII is of the opinion that that advice could have been given the AG because, “you don’t need a committee to come out and say whether the contract can be set aside or not.”

Mr. Azeem pointed out that the terms of reference for the committee was to review and re-negotiate agreement but rather focused their attention on the validity of the contract “so I think the committee didn’t actually do us any good at all.”

By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @osamidan

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