Cocaine turns into flour - At Police Exhibits Store

Front Page: March 25, 2008.
Story: Albert K. Salia
IT has now been established that corn flour, yellowish in colour, was used to substitute the cocaine kept at at the Police Exhibits Store at CID Headquarters in Accra.
It has also been brought to the attention of the Kojo Armah Committee investigating the circumstances leading to the substitution of the cocaine that a box containing 30 kilogrammes of cocaine is also missing from the store.
The Chairman of the committee, Mr Kojo Armah who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Evalue Gwira, told the Daily Graphic that the initial test results from the Ghana Standards Board (GSB) indicated that corn flour, yellow in colour, was put in the store in place of the original seized cocaine.
He said the committee was, however, awaiting a final report from GSB on the substituted substances.
The issue of the swapped substance was detected on the very first day of the test and it was communicated to DSP Akagbo the following day by the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) upon receipt of the information from the GSB through Chief Superintendent Alphonse Adu-Amankwah, the then Head of the Organised Crime Unit at the CID Headquarters.
“A complete box, Box Number 46, containing 30 kilogrammes, was found missing during the audit ordered by the Director-General of the CID, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Frank Adu-Poku,” a highly placed source told the Daily Graphic.
At the time of first examination on July 10, 2006 when the 67 boxes of cocaine, each containing 30 kilogrammes, had been brought from Tema on May 22, 2006, with “everything intact and tested positive for cocaine”, the source added.
The missing box was detected at the end of the audit. The lock to the store was changed after it had been detected that the substance had been swapped. It is, however, not clear whether the box was stolen before the audit or in the course of it.
Asked if the committee had recommended the removal of Chief Supt Adu-Amankwah from the Organised Crime Unit, Mr Armah said the committee had taken a position not to discuss its report in public until the Minister of the Interior had issued a statement on it.
He said, however, that he was aware that Chief Supt Adu-Amankwah had been moved to a new unit, the Police Operations and Research Directorate, since March 20, 2008.
As to whether the witnesses who appeared before the committee had been truthful in their evidence, Mr Armah said it was normal for people to cover their tracks during investigations.
He explained that some witnesses had to be recalled as many as four times to clarify their testimonies.
Mr Armah said there were some witnesses who had been frank in their testimonies to the committee, while others had tried to be elusive.