A member of Parliament’s finance committee, Dr. Mark Assibey-Yeboah has challenged the Attorney General to go after Ghanaians indicted in global leaked report for illegally stashing millions of taxable money in Swiss banks.He said the Attorney General, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, must go after the wealthy Ghanaians who are said to have stashed $89 million in several HSBC private bank accounts in Switzerland.
Speaking to Joy News Monday, Dr. Assibey-Yeboah said government must take the matter seriously.
“First and foremost we have to establish that these institutions or individuals have evaded taxes. And the AG Department and the Ghana Revenue Authority would have to take steps to retrieve these [monies]”
The leaked Swiss files, published by the BBC, Monday also ranks Ghana 106 among 203 countries with the largest dollar amounts in Swiss banks.
The report found that these wealthy Ghanaians whose names are not mentioned evaded tax by hiding their millions in the HSBC accounts.
The UK and Indian governments are already going after the accused individuals.
The report also revealed that majority of these illegal accounts were opened between 2003 and 2005.
Dr. Assibey-Yeboah however tasked the government to strengthen its tax monitoring mechanism since the problem persists even within the country.
“Let us look inward, there are people evading taxes on a daily basis here that runs into billion of Ghana cedis. There are tax exemptions we give that run into billions of Ghana cedis”, he said.
The legislator however cautioned against politicising the matter, urging that the matter must be seen as a national problem.
