The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has declined to answer public interest questions on why it has allegedly mobilised about GH¢74 million for a private construction company to put a 14-storey building at Kanda, where the National Security does not permit such structures.

Sources say although the GRA has paid the whopping amount to the private company somewhere in 2020, the National Security has restrained the former from erecting the high rising building, as the area house the seat of government.

Meanwhile, the Revenue Authority is said to be using coercive power to cease the land being used for the project from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), whereas it has allegedly doled out plots of land it owns at the Airport and Cantonments to private developers.

Hitherto, when the GRA was conducted on different occasions to speak on the issues and many others brought against it by an anti-corruption group, the Movement for Truth and Accountability, it woefully shied away.

The Authority’s Assistant Commissioner of Communication and Public Affairs, Mrs Florence Asante and her deputy, Mr Yamson were the focal persons contacted at the GRA but both were apprehensive.

Efforts to get the GRA’s side of the story had this reporter with a colleague from a different media house stuck-up in the Authority’s faulty elevator for several minutes without any help available, despite pressing on the emergency button on countless occasions.

What’s the Truth and Accountability Movement alleging?

The Movement last Saturday organised a press conference claiming that taxes being mobilised by the Authority are being channeled through ventures that are not profitable to the citizenry but few individuals.

The Convener of the group, Joseph Bediako told journalists in Accra that the GRA under the Commissioner-General Rev. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah has contracted a private company to put a 14-storey near the Kanda Post office, to be used as the Headquarters of the Authority.

Mr Bediako alleged, “…close to GH¢74 million was paid in 2020, as mobilisation fee whist there was no site handing over documents from [the] Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (owners of the land) to [the] GRA.”

He said their findings disclosed that the National Security would permit the construction of such a self-imposing structure close to the Jubilee House, the seat of government, due to security reasons.

Due to this security concern, he said the GRA had been compelled to reduce the sky-rising building to four, hance giving raise to why in the first place the Authority did not make all these inquiries before handling the whopping amount of money to the private company.

Notwithstanding these hurdles to the building, he quizzed the GRA about why it is not interested in developing or erecting the said structure on a plot of land it has adjacent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration.

“Another interesting development we have discovered is that half of the land at Cantonments near the [former] Chinese Embassy owned by the GRA has been given to a government appointee. Why is sharing government land being shared to individuals…?”