Investigative journalist, Manasseh Azure Awuni has described claims made by Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML) during its recent press conference as false and misleading.
SML’s lawyer, Cephas Boyuo, at a media briefing on Friday, November 7, defended the company’s revenue assurance contract with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), rejecting the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s (OSP) findings that the firm lacked technical capacity and engaged in irregularities.
However, reacting to the lawyer’s comments on Eyewitness News with Sammie Wiafe, Manasseh Azure said the company was attempting to distort the facts.
“The comments I heard from SML’s lawyers were not surprising. Much of it was falsehoods. They have peddled these falsehoods after we caught them pants down.
“The SML lawyer is trying to tell Ghanaians that the company is paid based on performance, which is false,” he said.
He particularly took issue with SML’s claim that payments under the contract were performance-based, describing it as “totally false.”
“If anybody ever gets to speak to them, let them read the payments clause, the fees from the contract. The upstream petroleum products, Ofori-Atta, instigated it, and the contract said that every barrel of petroleum product we produce, SML should be entitled to $75 per barrel.
“So, at the time we were producing 150,000 barrels a day, this company will be making $120,000 daily, not tied to any performance, so what the lawyer said is false.”
Manasseh Azure’s investigative report on SML’s contracts with the GRA first brought public attention to the deal, prompting the OSP’s subsequent inquiry into the matter.
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