The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has intensified its nationwide campaign against all forms of illicit fuel trade. This campaign also forms part of Chief Executive, Mr Godwin Kudzo Tameklo’s vision to sanitize the downstream petroleum industry. This renewed campaign comes at the back of the Authority’s readiness to commence direct prosecution of defaulters using its own prosecutors after having been granted prosecutorial fiat by the Attorney General pursuant to Article 88(4) of the Constitution of Ghana.
The fiat, which is the Appointment of Public Prosecutors Instrument (E.I 378), allows the NPA to use its officers as prosecutors to prosecute from the District Courts all the way to the Supreme Court, persons involved in illicit fuel trade within the petroleum downstream in line with the Authority’s regulatory mandate.
The campaign has seen the Head of Corporate Communications, Naa Atswei Nee-Okpey, Head of Prosecution, Dr Farida Ali-Musah, Head of Security and Intelligence, Isaac Djagbletey and Head, Premix Sites and Retail Outlets, David Kangah Jnr, tour some of the regions of the country.
The NPA team has so far taken the campaign against illicit fuel trade to the Ashanti, Eastern, Central and the Western Regions where they held stakeholder and media engagements to educate the general public on illicit fuel trade, reminding them of the regulatory mandate of the NPA in this regard as well as the punitive sanction regime that defaulters may be facing.
Activities constituting illicit fuel trade according to the officials of the Authority included fuel smuggling, unlicensed oil transfers at sea, illegal importation, adulteration and contamination of fuel, unlicensed bulk storage, sale of petroleum products to unlicensed third-party retailers as well as diversion of subsidized petroleum products like premix fuel among others.
All these activities are frowned upon by the law and breach of the same may not only attract punitive fines and license suspension or revocation but may also result in the prosecution of defaulters by the Authority.
