The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has arrested officials from three China Mall outlets in Ashaiman, Weija and Nsawam over suspected tax evasion linked to the use of unauthorised invoicing platforms.
The arrests came after intelligence-led investigations and mystery shopping exercises found that some sales were missing from the GRA’s approved Electronic VAT (E-VAT) system.
Speaking to the media after the operation, Wisdom Kofi Xetor, Head of the GRA’s Revenue Protection Unit, said investigations were ongoing to determine the scale of the suspected tax evasion. He said the Authority would seek prosecution and prison terms of up to five years if it found that the breaches were deliberate.
“We have several China Mall outlets across the country. We visited the one in Ashaiman and carried out a mystery shopping exercise. We made purchases and checked the transactions. We then confirmed whether they had been recorded in our system and found that some had not been included.
“This means those transactions had been diverted. The invoices issued also did not follow our approved invoicing system. Ashaiman, Weija and Nsawam are the three areas we visited today,” he said.