In the final days leading up to Ghana’s December 2024 general elections, a revenue assurance and audit contract was quietly awarded by the Ghana Airpo
In the final days leading up to Ghana’s December 2024 general elections, a revenue assurance and audit contract was quietly awarded by the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) to Evatex Logistics Limited—a little-known mining and stevedoring firm with no credentials in financial auditing or revenue assurance.
The move has since triggered a wave of controversy, linked to an expanding procurement scandal involving Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Ltd (SML), a company already under investigation for alleged corruption and shady government contracts.
The GACL deal led to the recent arrest of Paul Adom-Otchere, immediate Board Chairman of the company by the Office of the Special Prosecutor, OSP.
Documents and interviews reviewed for this report show that Evatex—connected directly to SML through shared ownership and personnel—secured the lucrative contract under highly irregular and questionable circumstances, including alleged falsified documentation, potential backdating, and bypassed procurement protocols.
A Boardroom Beginning, Not a Management Process
Normally, firms seeking contracts with GACL begin by submitting proposals to the company’s management.
If management finds merit, the proposal is escalated to the board. But in the case of Evatex, the process bypassed management entirely.
According to GACL Managing Director Yvonne Nana Afriyie Opare, the process started at the board level.
She justified the award by claiming the company lacked internal capacity to conduct revenue audits—despite having 1,580 employees and a nine-member Audit, Risk Management and Compliance department.
More damning is that Evatex had only one registered employee at the time, according to its SSNIT Clearance Certificate—yet it was still awarded the contract.
That fact was known to GACL and documented in Evatex’s submitted files.
The SML Link
Evatex appears to be no more than a shell company for SML, the controversial firm previously handed hundreds of millions in revenue assurance contracts by the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) between 2019 and 2023.
Evatex shares not only an email domain (evatel@ghana.com) with Evans Timbers Ltd—SML’s parent company—but is also owned and operated by the same individual, Evans Adusei, who serves as CEO of both companies.
Several top SML executives, including its head of engineering and head of IT, were listed as key staff on the Evatex proposal submitted to GACL.
The contract was signed by Evans Adusei himself. Former senior GRA officials who now work at SML, including a past head of legal and former Commissioner of Customs, were also named as personnel on the Evatex team.
An Illegitimate Presentation: Devnest Disappears, Evatex Emerges
Perhaps the most perplexing part of the process was the company switch that occurred midway through the award procedure. Devnest Systems, a completely different entity with no formal connection to Evatex, made three presentations to the GACL board between June and August 2024. It was Devnest’s proposal and demonstration of capacity that won the board’s approval.
However, when GACL formally wrote to the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) requesting approval for a single-source procurement, Devnest was replaced by Evatex.
Despite having no experience or licensing to perform the services, Evatex was given the contract.
Devnest later wrote a letter asking that the contract be awarded to Evatex instead, citing its own lack of capacity.
But the company’s CEO, Albert Adjei-Laryea, was later listed as project manager for the Evatex deal, indicating he still stood to benefit financially.
Backdated Contracts and Suspicious Timing
The award and contract letters bear inconsistencies in date stamps. Though GACL received PPA approval on December 3, 2024, internal correspondence instructing contract finalisation was dated December 11.
Yet, the award letter was curiously backdated to December 5, and the final contract was dated December 4—days before the supposed go-ahead.
This was after the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), led by John Mahama, had already won the 2024 election.
Contracts signed in such a transitional period are typically scrutinised or reversed by incoming government.
No License, No History
The Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG) confirmed via a July 25, 2025, letter that neither Evatex nor SML is licensed to perform auditing or revenue assurance, rendering the contract legally questionable.
In fact, Evatex only added “audit and revenue assurance” to its corporate activities in February 2025, months after it had already secured the contract.
Furthermore, Evatex reported no taxable income for 2022 and 2023, and paid just GHS1,000 in taxes in 2024—the year it landed the GACL lucrative contract.
According to procurement analyst Kobina Atta-Bedu, these are clear violations of procurement law, which the PPA should have flagged.
The PPA’s Role: Complicity or Incompetence?
The Public Procurement Authority’s role in the scandal is central. GACL’s request letter to the PPA included no justification for sole sourcing—a key legal requirement.
The supposed Annexure C, which was meant to detail the team’s composition and qualifications, was blank.
Despite this, the PPA granted approval with no objection.
Attached SSNIT records even showed that Evatex had only one worker. The PPA ignored it.
15% Commission Scheme Raises Eyebrows
Under the contract, Evatex would receive 15% of any “excess” revenue it claims to recover for GACL.
But this “excess” is benchmarked against 2022 cargo revenue, which was unusually low ($781,000/month), while 2021 revenue averaged $909,000/month.
That means Evatex could earn commissions without any actual improvement in revenue—simply by comparing to a depressed baseline.
OSP Investigates, Contract Terminated
As pressure mounted, the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) intervened. On July 31, 2025, the OSP formally charged former GACL Board Chair, Paul Adom-Otchere, GACL’s Group Executive for Commercial Services, Kwame Baffour Awuah, and Devnest CEO Albert Adjei-Laryea.
On July 28, GACL terminated the Evatex contract, more than a month after being notified of the ongoing investigation.
Yvonne Afriyie Opare has been summoned by the OSP for questioning on August 4.
A Pattern Repeated: SML’s Shadowy Rise
This case mirrors SML’s rise in the petroleum and mining sectors.
Despite lacking expertise, SML was awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to perform services already covered by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), and the Ghana Gold Board.
SML’s role was exposed in a December 2023 investigation, prompting an audit by KPMG, which found the company’s impact negligible and its contracts riddled with legal violations.
Parliament suspended payments, and KPMG recommended the termination of most contracts—yet some, including the downstream petroleum agreement, resumed in June 2024.
Even then, SML’s claims of increasing government revenue were debunked by KPMG, which credited tax rate hikes, new levies, and system upgrades—not SML’s services—for the improvements.
Mahama’s Unkept Promise?
President John Mahama, then opposition candidate, vowed in 2023 to cancel all SML-related contracts if elected. Seven months into his presidency, parts of the SML deal are still operational—while the company, through Evatex, was embedded in a fresh public sector contract even before he took office.
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