Ghana is said to be broke but it does seem the West African country has a lot of money to play with—or to allow other countries to swindle as much as 109 million dollars from it.
According to a 2012 Auditor General’s Report, a United States-based company-American Tanker and Vessel Company has duped Ghana’s Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST) of over $109 million.
The US company was contracted by BOST in 2006 to construct two pipelines but has since failed to fulfil their part of the contract despite several diplomatic efforts and also having received as much as 109 million dollars in payment.
Acting Managing Director of BOST, Kwame Awuah-Darko has stated that the situation has had a negative toll on the operations of BOST as it had now incurred losses.
He told Ghana’s Public Accounts Committee Monday May 30; “There is an acknowledgement of the non-performance under the contract. There is a last ditch diplomatic effort that started at the end of last year, if that doesn’t yield any results then we have no choice than to go down the legal route.”
“…This is something that is very painful. That single transaction has almost made BOST unprofitable… If you look at our account, our auditor will tell you last year alone we had to take over GHS180 million in unrealised forex losses because, obviously, it is a dollar-denominated facility and you have to make sure that you have made provision to cover that obligation and the infrastructure has not been delivered, so we are unable to utilise that infrastructure and pay back the loan. It is the single most difficult challenge that I faced when I went to BOST,” Mr Awuah-Darko said.
BOST claims it will bring a legal action against the US company to compel it to fulfill the contract—but considering the number of years gone by without such a legal action already, it doesn’t seem like anything will come out of this talk.