Tema Port Fraudulent Cases; Five Companies Fingered

Five Companies believed to be part of the tax evading syndicate operating with the connivance with officials of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) at the Tema Port long room have been exposed. Apart from declaring most of their chicken thighs and breasts as chicken backs which attract less tax, the companies are also accused of consistently deceiving the public that their goods were imported from Brazil. Ghana News Agency (GNA) investigations revealed that although the officials of the Customs division of GRA were aware that Brazil does not export chicken backs, they had often defended the companies to clear their goods without any impediment denying the country of huge sums of revenue. The GNA information from some secret documents named the companies as; Danaase Company Limited, Holylane Company Limited, Patnice Company Limited, LaBianca Company Limited and Awo Frozen Foods Limited. The Directors of all the five companies have the same surname, suggesting that they are either for one person or a consortium that was trying to outsmart revenue officials at the port. Although all their documents indicated that the chicken backs were often imported from Brasil Foods, a chicken exporting company in Brazil, the company had since denied and challenged them with documents that were copied to the GNA. GNA information from Brasil Foods indicated that the company only used their chicken backs as raw material for the production of other products, mainly for Brazilian Market and not for export. More revelations identified the above companies (whose Directors' names are for now withheld) as the only Ghanaian Companies that import huge tonnage of chicken backs from the above Brazilian company, which had so far denied their claims. In the month of October alone, the five companies according to the documents GNA stumbled upon, have consistently imported millions of cartons of chicken backs, while the other chicken parts, such as legs, wings and breasts were often in smaller quantities, an indication that there were fraudulent and hindsight dealings. Meanwhile, other companies in the same business have never in any of the documents indicated that they imported the same products from Brazil. A letter signed by Marcelo Siegmann, Sales Manager of Brasil Foods Africa (PTY) Limited, on December, 6, 2011 in Johannesburg, South Africa and copied the GNA stated that, "We come to you through this letter to attest that we as Brasil Foods, owners of the brands sadia and perdix and longtime exporters of chicken, turkey, beef and pork as well as processed products to many countries in the world; do not produce, process or export the product chicken backs to Ghana or any other country in the world." It would be recalled that, GNA, a couple of weeks ago, published a story about the connivance of officials of Customs Division of GRA at the Tema Port long room that had denied government, huge sums of money. The story indicated that there was a specific company with different names that manipulated the system to milk the state of necessary revenue. GNA publication also stated that the CT Scanners at the Tema Port long room could not differentiate chicken parts, which the importers capitalised on to dupe the state.