Ghana - In March the govt lost $5.8 million in revenue due to fraudulent termination of international calls

[the accra daily mail] Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communications, has said that in March 2010 alone, government lost $5.8 million in revenue due to fraudulent termination of international calls coming into Ghana.

He told journalists that the situation where international calls are being terminated on mobile phones as local cell phone numbers was a fraud being perpetrated by unidentified persons, adding that so far about 3,000 landline and cell phone numbers have been identified as being used for that fraud.

The minister said the numbers identified cuts across networks, but did not say whether the telecom operators concerned have been instructed to cancel those numbers.

He however pointed out that the National Communications Authority (NCA), the communications regulator, has been instructed to initiate measures to ensure a uniform tariff of $0.19 per minute on all in-bound international calls.

This, the minister said, would safeguard government's revenue earnings of about $60 million a year from in-bound international calls.

"If the tariff is made uniform it will not matter whether the call terminates as a local or foreign call, government will still charge its tax component on that uniform rate," he said.

International calls to Ghana usually terminate on the receiver's phone as either 'Private Number', 'Unknown' or '000000', but lately some international calls terminate with local cell phone numbers, as if they are local calls.

Perpetrators of this fraud are said to use a device called SIM Box or GSM gateway to hack into mobile networks and route international calls to local mobile or landline numbers within the same network the call was to terminate, then re-route the call from that local number to the number the international call was originally intended for.

The fraudsters make it look like the call originated and terminated within the same network so the payment of international interconnectivity fee is avoided and government loses in terms of taxes on such calls.

It is suspected that some employees of the telecom operators are conniving with external contractors to commit this fraud.

But when the Ghana News Agency (GNA) contacted the various telecom operators they said the problem did not originate from them and expressed concern that they were also losing money.

Mr. Isaac Cudjoe, Head of Corporate Communications at Vodafone Ghana, told GNA that because customers were not compelled to register their simcards, some tend to use their phone numbers for fraudulent practices and get away with it.

He said currently Vodafone has taken advantage of the new numbering system to register all landline numbers to the names of the customers to ensure that customers could be traced through their numbers, adding that beginning from June Vodafone would also start a vigorous mobile phone simcard registration exercise.

"We believe that when simcards are registered and they are used for fraud we can easily trace them, block them and even bring the owner to book."

Mr. Cudjoe however admonished customers to "report to any Vodafone Customer Service point anytime a Vodafone number or landline appears on your phone when you receive an international call."

In response to a questionnaire, Zain said they are constantly monitoring the situation and implementing mechanisms to secure their network and revenue.

They noted that the perpetrators were resident in Ghana and so Zain numbers suspected to be undertaking such fraudulent activities were blocked immediately.

"Zain Ghana is also working in collaboration with other telecom operators in the country to detect and deal with this fraud," they said, and urged their subscribers to report to Zain customer service centre on 0266000111 whenever they got international calls and a local Zain number appeared on their handsets.

Mrs. Gina Asare-Fiagbenu, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications of MTN Ghana expressed similar sentiments and said MTN was beginning compulsory simcard registration by the close of May as part of measures to stem such fraudulent practices.

"We are already registering all new simcards bought from MTN but beginning from this month we will ask all MTN simcard holders to register their cards within one year, if not the simcard will be blocked," she said.

Ghana: Government Losing $5.8 Million Monthly to Fraudulent International Calls Termination