SFO indicts Quashigah, two others

Pages 24/25: Daily Graphic, November 13, 2009.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has indicted Major Courage Quashigah (retd), the Minister of Health under the Kufuor administration, and two other officials of the ministry for impropriety in the award and execution of a GH¢1.2 million preventive maintenance contract.
According to the SFO, although an amount of GH¢646,000 was released as advance mobilisation fee to enable the contractor to undertake the planned periodic maintenance of all 52 health training institutions under the ministry, its investigations to ascertain the scope of work done at all the facilities showed that no work had been done in most of them.
It was also found that besides the fraudulent award of the contract, all the five companies which won the bids were found to be under the control of the same person.
Major Quashigah and the two officials, Mr Peter Azumah, the acting Director of Administration, and the Estate Officer, have been granted bail awaiting prosecution.
The Executive Director of the SFO, Mr Biadela Mortey Akpadzi, and his two deputies, Messrs Charles Nii Akrong (Operations) and Justice A.Y. Tsar (Research and Monitoring), confirmed to the Daily Graphic yesterday that the SFO had undertaken a number of investigations into other public sector institutions and not the Ministry of Health alone.
They said other public officials had also been indicted in various financial scandals, with the MoH findings being a ‘minor’ one.
Mr Akpadzi was emphatic that those investigations had been ongoing for some time now and had not been initiated recently.
He explained that because the work of the SFO was done on the quiet, it often came into public domain after the office had submitted its report to its supervising ministry, the Ministry of Justice.
Other investigations conducted by the SFO and cited by the Daily Graphic indicated that it had also looked into the issue of unauthorised payments to the former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Mr Robert Ahomka-Lindsay.
The documents explained that following a petition by the acting CEO of the GIPC in September 2009, the SFO investigated the allegations against Mr Ahomka-Lindsay.
It was revealed that in March 2008 the GIPC paid $8,138 as the cost of air tickets for Mr Ahomka-Lindsay’s wife and his children during an investment promotion mission to the UAE, India and China, although the wife and the children were not part of the official delegation.
Further investigations revealed that in February 2008 Mrs Ahomka-Lindsay had booked and paid for Economy Class tickets for herself and two of her children in preparation for the trip but the tickets were later upgraded to First Class and re-issued to tally with Mr Ahomka-Lindsay’s schedule at his instance and paid for by GIPC.
It was also established by the SFO that in 2008 an amount of US$100,000 was paid to Mr Ahomka-Lindsay as salary advance pending the formalisation of a consultancy contract with the Presidency.
With regard to the US$100,000 salary advance paid to Mr Ahomka-Lindsay, investigations revealed that the GIPC board, at its 57th meeting, approved of the amount to him with the intention that the CEO would refund funds received under the Public Services Commission but they were not refunded.
With regard to MASLOC, the SFO said the investigations focused primarily on the loans granted to MDAs and micro financing institutions (MFIs) through irregular means.
It said the aim principally was to salvage the scheme from virtual collapse, in the light of the ineptitude of MASLOC officials and the participating banks in making recoveries from beneficiaries.
It said it was established that disbursement to MDAs made in 2008 exceeded the threshold, without proper approval, and included disbursements of GH¢200,000 to the SEN's programme, GH¢2,445,380 to the NYEP ICT training programme by ROAGRAM Link Ltd, GH¢735,250 to RUMSEC in respect of the Presidential Special Initiatives and GH¢2,000,000 to Messrs Plant Pool Gh Ltd/GPRTU).
The report on it mentioned the former CEO of MASLOC, Mr Lawrence Prempeh, and Mrs Amina Montia, the Head of Administration, as approving those transactions, in violation of established procedures.
It said Mrs Montia was currently on interdiction and put on caution bail.
The SFO has, however, been able to recover GH¢1,408,500, being recoveries of GH¢800,000 from the NYEP ICT programme, GH¢439,000 from the PSIIRUMSEC programme, GH¢100,000 from Plant Pool Ghana Ltd and GH¢69,500 being the full payment, including interest and penalty, to the Asontaba Cottage Industry.
According to the SFO, investigations into the transfer of some amounts into the personal accounts of some officers of MASLOC from a GH¢2 million Japanese grant meant to be disbursed to support flood victims in the three Northern Regions were ongoing.
It said the officers had been interdicted and put on bail as well.