Five Custom Officers, one officer from the Narcotics Control Commission, one Port Security officer, one Energy Commission officer and one Standards Authority officer have been arrested over an undeclared Tramadol seizure at Tema Port.
The nine public officers’ arrest follows the seizure of a container loaded with 299 cartons containing 146,932,000 tablets of Tramadol Hydrochloride (250mg and 225mg), weighing a total of 34,847.2 kilogrammes at the Tema port.
All nine arrests have been placed on Police inquiry bail.
Reports from the GRA detailed that the seizure was triggered by intelligence gathered by the Preventive Unit of the Customs Division.
The shipment originated from the United Arab Emirates and had been declared as containing household items such as water kettles, kitchen blenders, pressing irons, energy-saving bulbs and polypropylene materials; however, a joint re-examination conducted by Customs officers on March 1, 2026, uncovered large quantities of concealed and undeclared Tramadol tablets hidden within the container.
In addition, the importer and declarant have since been handed over to the Police to assist with ongoing investigations.
In related news, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has interdicted five customs officers with immediate effect, pending the outcome of an internal investigation into potential procedural breaches uncovered during a recent enforcement operation.
On Tuesday, February 24, in a press release issued, the GRA detailed that the five officers, following preliminary findings, were linked to the procedural breaches of a transit cargo operation bound for Niger.
Meanwhile, Paul Kwabena Amaning, the president of the Oil Palm Development Association of Ghana (OPDAG), has told the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) to expand its investigations into the alleged corruption scheme involving the diversion of 50 20-foot containers of palm oil valued at GH₵25.8 million.
According to the OPDAG, the OSP must expand its ongoing anti-corruption investigations to involve Customs officers who own two or more houses.
He argued that the investigation of these customs officers will unravel a potential syndicate linked to the diversion and smuggling of oil Palm.
Paul Kwabena Amaning detailed that nearly 90 per cent of oil currently on the Ghanaian market is smuggled, arguing that the situation threatens the Mahama government’s commitment proposed US$500 million Oil Palm Development
The OPDAG President is quoted to have said, “It is normal because these people who are agents, in fact, it’s a syndicate, that the main customs who are responsible to make sure that our borders are very secure for people to bring in this, they are not doing their work at all because they aid and abet with those criminals, these market women, the importers, to find means to bring the oil.
“I know His Excellency John Dramani Mahama has a good intention to invest close to $500 million into the industry. But with all this intervention, if we cannot sell because the tax component on the product makes our oil, the local oil price very high. So we are not competitive at all in terms of price,” Paul Kwabena Amaning said.
“But we keep on drumming and drumming about this issue. Nobody was coming to our aid. Now the special prosecutor is saying that he’s going to do ABCD. Please, he should go deep down and investigate every customs officer who has two or three or four houses, how they came about those houses. They need to go deep down with it. That will solve this problem,” he added.