Stealing Galore At GRA

The �Daily Post� can authoritatively state that billions of cedis have been stolen from the state by some officials of the Procurement Department of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA). Painstaking investigations conducted by this paper reveals that the modus operandi of the thieves and fraudsters in this department is to inflate the prices of goods to be bought by the Authority sometimes by as much as 100% and pocket the amount added to the real price. This paper was able to trace some instances where items that were bought by the Authority, especially motorbikes and vehicles, had their prices inflated by over a 100% with the perpetrators of this crime against the state pocketing the huge sum they put on the real price. In one of such deals, affirm, Roydziff, won the bid through restricted tender to supply the GRA with 40 motorbikes at GH�8,000 each. The total cost to the GRA therefore stood at GH�320,000 (�3.2 billion). However, the price of each motorbike was inflated by officials of the Procurement Department of the GRA from GH�8,000 per bike to GH�17,000. The total amount that the Authority was therefore made to pay for the 40 motorbikes was GH�680,000. The thieves and fraudsters thus succeeded in stealing GH�360,000 (�3.6 billion) from the state which is the difference between the inflated price of the 40 bikes (�680,000) and the real price (GH�320,000). The role the Head of Procurement, Hawawu Salifu, is playing in this stealing spree which is leading to the loss of huge sums of monies to the states is interesting. She has been fingered as the brain behind the stealing and the fraud being visited on the state.