JUBA – South Sudan government has been receiving only 25 percent of non-oil revenue collections since 2019, while a massive 75 percent share is remitted to private firm Crawford as payment for digital service, a new UN commission investigation finds.
The Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said the agreement started when South Sudan began a migration toward digitized systems for the assessment and collection of taxes, customs duties and related non-oil revenues.
The Commission noted that while digitization presented an opportunity to address diversion and corruption in revenue collections, the ‘e-Services,’ implemented through Crawford Capital Ltd, have instead facilitated organized corruption and predation, resulting in further revenue diversion.
Crawford was contracted in November 2019, as the exclusive provider for ‘e-Government Services,’ in a partnership with the Ministry of Information, Communication Technology and Postal Services (ICT and Postal Services) under its minister Michael
Makuei.
The Ministry and the National Communications Authority were among the institutions which lobbied for contracting Crawford, the commission found.
It added that Crawford service approval followed written advice from Akol Koor Kuc, then-Director General of the Internal Security Bureau (ISB) of the National Security Service, in which he proposed that Crawford “should work in partnership with the ISB ICT Department since they are aiming to create huge databases and integration of services that can be accessed online.”
The commission said the nature of the intelligence service’s involvement in the single-source procurement process suggests that ‘e-Services’ are also likely to be used without any consideration for personal data protection to facilitate unlawful State surveillance of citizens, an established tactic of repression in South Sudan.
“Under the 16 November 2019, contract arrangement between Crawford and the Ministry of ICT and Postal Services, 75 per cent of the ‘eServices’ profit share goes to Crawford, and 25 per cent to the Ministry (as for ‘e-Crude Accreditation Permit’ fees,” the investigation revealed.
That contract arrangement, reviewed by the Commission, purports to exempt Crawford from paying taxes during the first ten years of ‘eServices’ implementation, including corporation tax, import tax, and value added tax.
Documents reviewed by the Commission show that Crawford proposed the Ministry should “be the face of the project,” while the company remained in the background but still retaining majority shares.251 Crawford has since entered similar arrangements with other government entities
Crawford is a company with political connectedness exemplified by the breadth of government institutions involved in facilitating increasing State capture.
Government response
South Sudan government spokesperson Michael Makuei has dismissed the UN report as “unsubstantiated” and lacking any evidence.
“There is nothing new about these so-called human rights organizations that claim to monitor and supervise the government. I will not be responding to all these because these are reports which I believe are not substantiated and have no real evidence to support their allegation,” he told the independent Eye Radio.
“If they have any reports, then these reports are supposed to come to the government of South Sudan.”
