Ghana tax authority seals businesman Daniel McKorley's Electrochem plant over $560,000 debt

Ghana's tax authority has sealed the offices of a salt mining company owned by businessman Daniel McKorley and given it seven days to pay an outstanding tax bill of 8.6 million cedis ($560,000) or face a full shutdown.

Officers from the Ghana Revenue Authority sealed the administrative block of Electrochem Ghana Limited, a subsidiary of McKorley's McDan Group, at its site in Ada on Wednesday. The move followed what the authority described as years of failed attempts to recover the debt, which it said had accumulated since 2021.

The GRA laid out a paper trail. Joseph Annang, the area enforcement manager for Accra Central, said the company had been served with an immediate demand notice on January 7 and a final demand notice on February 13 this year, and had still not paid.

The authority chose a partial closure rather than a total one. Annang said the GRA had the legal grounds to seal the main entrance and halt everything, but decided to lock only the administrative block so production could continue and the company could raise money to clear the balance. He said the concession reflected the fact that Electrochem is an indigenous Ghanaian business employing many workers whose jobs a full shutdown would put at risk.

During the operation, Electrochem handed over a cheque for 200,000 cedis, which Annang said the authority accepted as a show of commitment even though it fell far short of what is owed. Company management asked for more time to mobilise the rest, but the GRA declined to extend the deadline, saying the firm had already had ample opportunity to settle.

The warning was blunt. Annang said that if the debt is not cleared or a payment plan agreed within seven days, enforcement officers will return and seal the main gate, cutting off access for workers, customers and suppliers alike. He said the next visit would not be friendly.

Company officials pointed to recent hardship. According to the enforcement team, management cited the impact of recent floods on the company's operations. Annang said the authority appreciated those challenges but stressed that the arrears were historical obligations that had to be honoured, and that the state needed the revenue to fund its projects.

The GRA framed the action as part of a wider crackdown. Annang said enforcement was always a last resort, used only after friendly approaches had been exhausted, and that the authority had noticed a growing pattern of businesses filing tax returns without remitting the amounts they declared, letting interest pile up. He urged companies with arrears to come forward voluntarily or negotiate terms before enforcement teams arrive, and said the exercise was part of a drive to hit the GRA's collection targets for the year. When the Ghana News Agency visited the production site with officials, work was continuing and staff were at their posts.

Electrochem is one of the more prominent pieces of the McDan empire. The company runs a large salt mining operation on a concession at Ada, in the Greater Accra Region, where the Volta River meets the sea, and McKorley has pitched it as a vehicle to turn Ghana into a major salt exporter serving West African and international markets, including the oil and chemical industries. The project has drawn political attention and, at times, controversy over the size and award of its concession.

McKorley built the wider group from the ground up. Known across Ghana as McDan, he started out as a small-scale trader and founded McDan Shipping in 1999, expanding into a conglomerate that spans shipping and logistics, aviation, real estate, salt mining, hospitality and a private jet terminal at Kotoka International Airport. He is one of the country's best-known entrepreneurs and is frequently described in Ghanaian and pan-African media as a billionaire, though his privately held businesses make that figure difficult to verify independently.

His companies have tangled with the state before. Electrochem's operations at the Songor lagoon have been the subject of disputes with local salt winners over access to the resource, and McKorley has repeatedly defended the venture as a job creator and a boost to national output.

The businessman's dealings have also intersected with press freedom concerns. Noah Narh Dameh, a journalist with Radio Ada who had reported critically on Electrochem's activities around the Songor lagoon and was arrested in 2022 over a broadcast deemed defamatory to McKorley, died in September 2023 after what colleagues described as a prolonged illness. Media rights groups had classified the case against him as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, and his death drew renewed attention to the friction between the salt project and the surrounding community.

Neither McKorley nor McDan Group commented publicly on the sealing, and Electrochem's management declined to comment when approached by the Ghana News Agency. What happens next is straightforward in the authority's telling. The company has until the middle of next week to pay the 8.6 million cedis or agree terms, and if it does not, the GRA says it will be back to lock the gates.