GCNeT DRAGGED TO COURT

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw owusu

Tuesday March 19, 2013

The Commercial Court in Accra will today commence hearing into the case in which a whistle blower is seeking to block the Ghana Community Network Services (GCNet) from being given a contract renewal to facilitate trading activities in the country.

Currently, GCNet is the sole agency mandated by the Ministry of Trade and Industry to provide electronic data interchange platform and customs management application software for the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

Apart from the GCNet, the plaintiff Joe Onyame aka Koku Ekpe who says he is a Tema-based business man, also cites GRA, Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Justice & Attorney-General’s Department as the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th defendants in the suit.

Reliefs Sought

He wants an order of interlocutory injunction restraining any agency of the state including the GRA, Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Justice & Attorney-General’s Department from either renewing any contract with GCNeT for the provision of any services to GRA or entering into any similar contract with GCNeT.

He also wants an order directed at GRA, Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Justice & Attorney-General’s Department “to act on the investigation report indicting certain officials” of the GCNeT.

Furthermore, the plaintiff wants an order to “secure forthwith all the systems servers in the custody of GCNeT to pre-empt any eventual attempts by GCNeT at concealing incriminating evidence lodged in the servers.”

Mr. Onyame also wants the court to order for “the nomination of an independent Information Technology expert to undertake the full and comprehensive/analysis of all systems, logs and data on both the TRADENET and the Ghana Customs Management Servers with the objective of unearthing the full scope and extent of the fraud.”

In the alternative, the plaintiff wants an order for the proprietary owners of the software to be brought down to conduct a full and comprehensive audit of the systems server logs, as well as an analysis of all trade and customs date on the servers.”

The plaintiff also wants an order directed at GRA, Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Justice & Attorney-General’s Department “to recover all revenue loss to the state arising out of GCNet’s manipulation, deletion and modification of trade customs and any other data from the customs server.”

He also wants an order directed at GRA, Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Justice & Attorney-General’s Department “to pay informants award to the plaintiff based on the total government tax revenue established as lost after such investigations and analysis as indicated.”

Finally, the plaintiff wants an order directed at “the government acting through the Attorney-General to stop GCNeT from continuing forthwith with its participation in the execution of the e-gov project contract,” as well as legal costs.

Statement of Claim

In his statement of claim, the plaintiff averred that he “is emboldened by the Whistle Blowers Act (Act 720) 2006 to initiate the instant action.”

According to the plaintiff, he is bringing the action in order to compel the defendants “to plug the gaping holes that have been created in the government revenue collection machinery, being institutions, charged with protecting and preserving government revenue.”

The plaintiff avers that GCNeT was contracted under the auspices of the Ministry of Trade to provide a data interchange platform (TRADENET) which is in essence an electronic communication system that allows the Customs Division of GRA to communicate and exchange date related to its operations with its private and public stakeholders, with the overall objective of facilitating trade under the government’s Gateway Project.

He further averred that the GCNeT was also contracted to provide a service referred to as the Ghana Customs Management System (GCMS) which is application software that enables the Customs Division to accelerate the processing of trade and customs documentation for the clearance of goods through the entry points.

The plaintiff argued that by accepting to provide the services, GCNeT by its contractual obligations was only expected to receive and redirect data, as well as provide and maintain communication infrastructure in a manner similar to the kind of services provided by the telecoms and not to have access to the content of the information that is sent to, from or across the communication infrastructure.

The Fraud

The plaintiff said although the systems server on which the customs data is stored is under 24 hour surveillance, the news that GCNeT officials siphoned government revenue to private pockets defeated the purpose of fraud in the system.

“As an informant who had knowledge of this fraud perpetrated by the officials of GCNeT, he wasted no time in informing the authorities concerned (customs) about the manipulation of the system.’ The plaintiff claimed.

He said he discovered in April 2010 that a group operating within the customs clearing and trading community was stealing customs tax revenue by breaking into the system and tampering with customs and trade data and those behind were GCNeT officials after which he reported to CEPS.

According to the plaintiff, the CEPS through its Commissioner Mr. Lanyon, after an investigation into his complaint failed to prosecute the culprit and it allowed one Elliot Ansah, a Manager of GCNeT to flee the country to the United Kingdom.

The plaintiff says that due to the refusal of the defendants to act on the incidence of fraud, losses estimated at about $7million occurred.

Rebuttal

The GCNeT filed a response, denying the plaintiff’s claim and said among other things that “he (plaintiff) lacks the capacity to mount the action.”

According to GCNeT, “there is no gaping holes that have been created in the government revenue collection machinery attributable to the first defendant or at all.”

The first defendant says that “the effect of its services is to make it possible to trace tax evasion and potential revenue loss,” adding “no revenue therefore is lost in the system as there is a trace of any discrepant process with opportunity for collection through a number of ways.”

It said no official from its side siphoned money from the system as alleged by the plaintiff and also denied any theft by its officials.

GCNeT also denied that the relevant agencies and institutions and were refusing to act on complaints and said “the writ is a nullity; it is not seeking any substantive relief, all reliefs being ancillary.”

As at the time of filing this report, there was no indication that the GRA, Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Justice & Attorney-General’s Department had filed any response.