Let’s not stampede presidency in releasing KPMG report on SML-GRA contract — Martin Kpebu

Martin Kpebu, a Private Legal Practitioner, has asked Ghanaians to give the Presidency an ample time before it releases the KPMG report on the agreement between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML).

Mr Kpebu said that would ensure that all persons cited in the report were offered the opportunity to respond appropriately.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on January 2, this year, commissioned the KPMG to look into the contract between the SML and the GRA, following an exposé by the Fourth Estate.

The Presidency, on Wednesday, April 3, 2024, confirmed that it had received the audit report on the deal.

Mr Eugene Arhin, Director of Communications at the Presidency, who confirmed receipt of the report, in a Facebook post, said the President was “studying the findings of the audit report, and will, in due course, make his decisions known to the Ghanaian people”.

Speaking on TV3’s “The Key Points” programme, on Saturday, monitored by the Ghana News Agency, Mr Kpebu cautioned Ghanaians against stampeding the Presidency in releasing the report without first giving a fair hearing to persons cited.

“By the practice, I think that we are stampeding him. I’m not in favour of the work going to KPMG, but well it's too late, we couldn’t fight enough, but if you look at the time they got it (the report), I’m hearing 27th March, if you look at audit reports, even the Audit Service, even our Audit Service Act, when they bring audit report, what they call management letter, and there are issues, you have 30 days to respond.

“So, I don’t think that we have basis to say when KPMG brought the report it should be less than 30 days… People who have been cited in the report should be given time to respond,” he stressed.

Mr Kpebu, however, indicated that the President must make public the findings of the report to bring to rest the matter.

He said: “As for that (making the report public) it is nonnegotiable, the President cannot sit on it, it has to come out.

“If he sits on the report he will be strengthening the hands of John Mahama again because in Mahama's regime when the Gyeeda corruption came he released a full report.”

Speaking on the same programme, Professor Ransford Gyampo, a Political Science Lecturer at the University of Ghana, said Ghanaians deserved to know the details of the report.

“The moment he received the report, we should have been given information about it. We should have been made to know that the report has been received.

“If the deal stinks, we have the right to know. If there is no corruption in the deal and we have unnecessarily run down someone let us know,” he said.

He also cautioned the media to be circumspect in their reportage on the matter to ensure the image of those involved were protected until the findings of the report were made known.

Mr Alex Segbefia, Director, International Relations Directorate of the National Democratic Congress, insisted on an immediate release of the findings of the report due to the public interest in the matter.

-GNA