Three former top officials of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), including former Commissioner-General Rev. Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, have been arrested by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) over the controversial Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) deal.
The two others are Dr. Isaac Crentsil, a former Commissioner of Customs, and Christian Tetteh Sottie, who once served as a technical advisor to the Commissioner-General. All three were picked up by the OSP for questioning and subsequently detained by the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) after failing to meet their bail conditions.
Sources close to the OSP confirmed that Dr. Crentsil and Tetteh Sottie currently occupy senior roles at SML, the company at the heart of the ongoing corruption probe.
The trio reportedly spent the night in NIB cells as investigations into the SML contracts deepen.
The scandal was first brought to light by an explosive investigative documentary by former journalists of The Fourth Estate—Evans Aziamor-Mensah, Adwoa Adobea-Owusu, and Manasseh Azure Awuni. The report exposed serious irregularities and alleged breaches of the Public Procurement Act in contracts awarded to SML.
Although SML started as a timber company, it pivoted into revenue assurance and received over $141 million in government payments without providing credible evidence of its contribution to increasing state revenue.
At the centre of the controversy is a 2023 consolidated contract engineered under the leadership of then-Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta. The contract, worth over $100 million annually and spanning five years (renewable for another five), is a key focus of the OSP’s investigation.
Ofori-Atta has since been declared wanted for alleged corruption and related offences connected to the deal.
Dr. Crentsil, one of the detained officials, was instrumental in the early stages of the GRA-SML partnership. He served as Commissioner of Customs from 2017 to 2019 and was later seconded to the Ministry of Finance as a technical advisor until his retirement in 2022. He now serves as General Manager at SML.
By: Ekow Annan/newsalertgh.com
