Alan’s Girl distances herself from SML's US$140 million "Chop Chop," claiming she is ignorant.

Abena Osei-Asare, the Deputy Finance Minister who oversees revenue at the moment, has denied knowing "details" of a contentious revenue contract involving SML Ghana Ltd.

The Minister's statement is being made at a time when it has been verified that the Ghanaian government has been paying SML Ghana more than US$140 million annually for services that the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) already provides efficiently.

The Fourth Estate reported that there is no record of any "work done," with SML Ghana officials unable to identify even one revenue anomaly they have assisted in correcting despite taking home millions of cedis each year from the Ghanaian government.

Despite GRA performing all of the work independently using its own systems, the SML company has been accused of taking part in a complex "create loot and share" system.

It was ineffective for Newspaper Herald to obtain the Deputy Minister in charge of revenue for their second report on SLM's operations.

According to the paper, the minister who publicly backed Alan Kyeremateng over Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia had pledged to get back to the SML deal document, but had fallen short.

She had responded, "I'm not aware of the details, so I will have to revert, pls," to a WhatsApp message that had been sent to her regarding the activities of SML. She never fulfilled her promise, though.

According to the Fourth Estate's investigations, Christian Tetteh Sottie, the Managing Director of SML, served as Ghana's Controller and Accountant-General from 2005 to 2009 and is presently a board member of the Internal Audit Agency. Mr. Sottie was the Commissioner General of the GRA's Technical Advisor at the time the purportedly dishonest contract was signed. He had previously served as an Assistant Commissioner at the GRA.

When SML Ghana began carrying out its contract with the GRA in 2020, according to reports, Mr. Sottie resigned from his position as the Commissioner General of the GRA's Technical Advisor in the same year, raising serious concerns about potential conflicts of interest and public office corruption.

Again, Mr. Sottie claims that since SML Ghana's founding, The GRA has been its only client. This indicates that the business did not have any prior experience providing the services in which it claimed to be an expert when it was hand-selected for the contract through the single source procurement method.

Despite being in charge of revenue at the Ministry of Finance, if the Deputy Finance Minister's response to the questions is to be believed, the SML Ghana deal may have been "arranged" above her head and without her knowledge by her superiors.