NCA To Be Dragged To CHRAJ Over 'Corrupt' Subah Deal

Founder of local think-tank IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe and economic analyst Sydney Casely Hayford are dragging Ghana's Telecommunications Regulator- the NCA- before the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) over its involvement in a Subah deal branded a sham. The two will be leading the charge to unravel the legitimacy of a contract entered into with Subah to provide telecom traffic monitoring services for revenue verification by NCA. Franklin Cudjoe insists the work for which Subah was contracted could easily have been done by the National Communications Authority (NCA) and suspects something fishy went wrong. "We are going to go full length, Sydney and I, to ensure that the measures we seek are [granted]," Franklin said on Joy FM's Super Morning Show. The Subah saga is a story of how the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) entered into a contract with Subah InfoSolutions to do electronic monitoring of mobile networks to confirm whether they are being truthful in declaring all their taxes. Under the contract, Subah was supposed to connect to some physical nodes of the telecom companies to monitor revenues that are supposed to be paid by the telcos, but this was not done. Subah InfoSolutions was nonetheless paid Ghc74 million from 2010-2012. While public criticism against Subah mounts, Franklin Cudjoe wants the public anger to be directed at the NCA. He also wants Ghana Revenue Authority to be let off the hook claiming its Chief Executive Officer, George Blankson, was "clueless" because he was appointed after the Subah deal had been consummated. He explained that the NCA has become an "active conduit" by "supervising the fraudulent deal". This is not the first time the NCA has been fingered in dubious grand schemes, he said. Earlier in the month, the President of IMANI-Ghana accused the NCA of bloating its budget after doing a "fictitious study". The NCA claimed it had done a survey, costing $3.5 million, to determine the perception of mobile phone users with regards to the services they receive from their telecom service providers. But IMANI called this a scam and claimed the survey could have been conducted with a budget less than $30,000. In view of a growing pattern of scams, Franklin wants the Authority to bear the responsibility. He said dragging NCA to face CHRAJ would also "wake up" a "moribund" commission. Stating his motivation for doing this, Mr. Cudjoe explained, he would not want to be held guilty of inaction after a recent National Economic Forum ended amidst public skepticism that discussions, some focused on corruption, would amount to a talk shop.