From Citifm Online

The country risks losing massive oil tax revenues if it continues awarding contracts to companies assess their tax liabilities themselves without checks, the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has said.

In the first of a series of policy briefs on Ghana’s oil governance, make it mandatory for all oil companies to disclose their beneficial owners before they are given contracts, and then hire independent auditors to verify the tax liabilities of the companies.

“The tax havens first of all they promotes corruption, in the sense that beneficial owners of the companies are hidden, [and] people award contracts to themselves because they own companies that are registered in countries compelled to disclose the owners,” Mohammed Amin Adam, Executive Director of ACEP, said.

“And because we are not allowed to know that they are behind those companies, they get away with it; and this is what rich countries where politicians have companies and they award contracts to their companies because you cannot tell that those politicians are behind those companies since you have no access to their registration documents.”

Most of the companies operating in the country’s oil industry are registered in tax- havens. Tullow Oil is incorporated in the British island called Jersey, a tax- haven that has just been blacklisted by France in a move to impose heavy penalties on thousands of French individuals and businesses.

Read more at Citifm Online