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SIX MONTHS of investigations by the Serious Fraud Office
(SFO) into the operations of Scancom (Ghana) Limited have uncovered one of the most sophisticated networks in international money laundering, tax evasion and balance sheet fraud.
Following that finding; the SFO has called for action to repatriate about ¢8 trillion from the company which was sold by the Lebanese owned Investcom to Mobile Telecommunications Network
(MTN) of South Africa in May 2006.
The amount, representing about one-sixth of the country's ¢44.8 trillion budget for 2007, was what was determined by the SFO as what Scancom defrauded the country of plus penalties.
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The SFO stepped in following serious allegations made against the company regarding its financial operations, the discharge of its tax obligations to the state and the circumstances of its takeover by MTN.
It recommended the recovery of various sums of money being corporate tax and National Reconstruction Levy (NRL) evasion between April and December 2005, as well as between the period of January 1997 and March 2005.
The SFO also asked for the confiscation of $8,506,859.91, which had been unlawfully appropriated, with part having been used in surreptitious repatriation and the acquisition of equity in Scancom, by Investcom.
Apart from that, $29,636,636.02, which is dividend purported to pave been repatriated offshore, through the country's banking system, without any recorded traces of that transaction within the banking system, was also to be confiscated.
Other recommendations are the prosecution of SCANCOM and Investcom for money laundering offences and Scancom for financial statement balance fraud. Agencies cited, through whose laxity these fraudulent deals were carried out, are the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and KPMG.
The SFO has recommended that a memorandum should be written to the BoG highlighting the weaknesses observed in the Bank's operational and control strategies in the area of foreign exchange management, while an explanation was to be demanded from KPMG, the external auditors of Scancom, for the glaring omissions and commissions, affecting the validity and reliability of the audited financial statements of Scancom.
A memorandum is also to be written to the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) and other appropriate bodies, highlighting limitations identified in the application of the GIPC Law and LI 1547
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