The Public Interest Accountability Committee (PIAC) has claimed that about $100 million of monies derived from Ghana’s petroleum reserves, were illegally paid into unknown accounts rather than the Petroleum Holding Fund (PHF).
The Vice Chair of PIAC, Dr. Abdul Nasir Alfa Mohammed, was speaking at the Parliamentary ad hoc committee on Ofori-Atta’s censure motion when he said that, $100 million of Ghana’s oil revenues has not been properly accounted for.
“We explored all the laws, in our opinion, that border around this issue and we still came to an independent opinion, which we stand by on any day, that those revenues ought to have formed part of the petroleum revenues of Ghana and ought to have been deposited in the Petroleum Holding Fund and not in any other account.”
Alfa Mohammed, Vice-Chair, PIAC
Dr. Mohammed said “it was contrary to law for that money to have been deposited in any accounts, if [it was done] at all.”
The Petroleum Holding Fund (PHF) was established under Section 2 of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA), as the official public fund for receiving and disbursing all of Ghana’s revenues accrued from Petroleum transactions.
The PHF is held offshore at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as the Bank of Ghana Petroleum Holding Fund Account.
The various revenues that are expected to be deposited into the PHF are: Royalties from oil and gas, surface rentals and other receipts from petroleum operations and sale or export of petroleum; Receipts from direct and indirect participation in petroleum operations by the government; Corporate income taxes from upstream and midstream petroleum companies.
Other revenues include: All amount payable by the national oil company as corporate income tax, royalty, dividends, or any other amount due in accordance with the laws of Ghana; Any amount received by government such as capital gains tax derived from the sale of ownership of exploration, development and production rights; Production and signature bonuses and additional oil entitlements.
Minority Accuses Government of Not Paying Revenues Into PHF
Earlier this year, the minority group in Parliament alleged that government for unknown reasons had not accounted for over $100 million of oil funds gotten from petroleum lifting in the first quarter of the year.
In a statement signed by Hon. John Abdulai Jinapor, Ranking Member on Parliament’s Mines and Energy committee, the caucus alleged that government had circumvented the monies into an account outside the country.
“The decision by the current NPP government to transfer revenues accruing from about 944,164 bbls of crude lifting in the Jubilee and TEN fields to a company established in a safe haven without parliamentary approval, amounts to a gross violation of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act, 2011 (Act 815) and Public Financial Management Act (Act 921).”
Abdulai Jinapor, MP
He relied on the PIAC 2022 semi-annual report to make claims that, contrary to the established laws of PRMA, revenues from Ghana’s oil sales were not being paid into the PHF.
The Yapei Kusawgu MP specifically pinned the alleged theft on Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.
“We have become aware that following the acquisition of a 7-per cent interest in the Occidental (Oxy) transaction in respect of the Jubilee and TEN fields by the government, ostensibly for GNPC in 2021, the Minister of Finance has clandestinely ceded the shares to an offshore company known as JOHL (a company set-up in the Cayman Islands) in a very surreptitious and opaque manner.”
Abdulai Jinapor, MP
“This NPP government is proving by the day, that the nation’s oil resources cannot be entrusted in their care,” he wrote, whiles making reference to previous PIAC reports that claimed government had not accounted “for about GHȼ2 billion of Ghana’s oil cash for the 2017, 2018 and 2019 fiscal years” as well.
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