The Deputy Minority Leader, Dominic Nitiwul has said he is not convinced that President John Mahama paid taxes on the Ford vehicle he received as a gift from the Burkinabe Contractor, Djibril Kanazoe According to him, claims by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) that the president satisfied all laws were not accurate.
He explained in an interview with Citi News that gifts are taxable by law and since the president confessed that the car was a gift he ought to have been paid taxes on it. “In Ghana when you receive a gift from any source and once you term it a gift you must pay some form of taxes on it.
So when the CHRAJ says that the President erred on a policy, it was not a policy it is a law.
If somebody is claiming that the President had paid all the taxes it is not true, it is just an afterthought maybe it is a corrective measure that somebody has taken because that person is in CHRAJ, it is a bribe but CHRAJ is trying to say that it is a gift. It is very unethical.”
“I can tell you clearly that if there is a God that is watching us, that God can testify that the President did not pay that gift tax.
When this matter broke up if the Presidency had that information because these were the questions everybody was asking that information would have been brought out long time,” he added.
CHRAJ report
CHRAJ in its report released on Thursday after investigating the Ford gift saga, stated that President Mahama breached the gift policy, when he accepted the gift from a Burkinabe contractor as Vice President in 2012.
CHRAJ said the gift in question, formed part of acts prohibited under the ‘Gift Policy’ under the Code of Conduct, and that although the evidence shows that President Mahama subsequently surrendered the gift to the State, the action nonetheless contravened the gift policy.
It however noted that, it did not find the President guilty of bribery, fraud or conflict of.
CHRAJ report shames critics
But the Co-ordinator of the 2016 National Democratic Congress (NDC) campaign, Kofi Adams argued that the CHRAJ report vindicates the president.
“Today is a day of shame for them, they [critics] have been exposed that they are only trying to destroy a gem, a pearl that we have,” he said.
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