Thursday at the Fast Track High Court, Issah Abass, corroborated Kwabena "Tagor” Amaning's revelation that Alhaji Abass was the mystery man behind the secret recording of the May 2006 conversation which took place in the house of Assistant Police Commissioner Kofi Boakye. The contents of the tape form the bases of the drugs charges that the two accused persons are facing.
Abass took the witness stance after the prosecution confronted Tagor with several house addresses, including the NHIS numbers to the properties in plush areas, which they claimed belonged to the accused person.
Tagor denied ownership of all but one property at East Legon. His counsel, Ellis Owusu_fordjour told the court that the prosecution had produced no document to support their claim of ownership.
Tagor, who said he worked as a warden at a juvenile prison in America, explained he was not at the time prepared to admit at the Georgina Wood public hearing of being an informant out of fear, because he'd seen what happened to informants through his warden experience.
When it was his turn, Alhaji Abass, displaying a far superior composure than his co-accused, Tagor, told a very silent court that it was through his voluntary assistance that the Narcotics Control Board and other security agents managed to locate 30 kilograms of cocaine on the MV Benjamin He said Ben Ndego of NACOB sent his driver, whom Abass said he met at the Cantonments Police Station, to receive the small, light-brown Sony Dictaphone he used for the recording.
He said, during the security raid on the vessel suspected to be carrying an original amount of more than 2,000kgs of the illicit drug, the officers were having difficulties in locating where the drugs might have been stored.
Ben Ndego, a senior official at NACOB then telephoned Alhaji Abass, an experienced operator of fishing vessels and a 'friend’ of NACOB and the Police Service, for help. According to Abass, he received a telephone call from Ndego who said he was on a boat and wanted to know where on a vessel something could be secretly hidden without detection. Alhaji Abass said he advised Mr Ndego to look at a particular place where usually used oil and other waste material are kept on such a boat.
He said after helping them with the necessary information, Ndego called him back to thank him that they had found the 30 slabs of cocaine. It was after this that Ndego let him in on NACOB’s investigations on the alleged missing parcels and their suspicions.
Abass further told the court that he and Tagor stage-managed the line of conversation at the meeting to bait ACP Kofi Boakye to talk. He said they did this as a patriotic duty to the State. He told the court that NACOB suspected ACP Boakye was behind about two metric tons of cocaine which allegedly went missing on the MV Benjamin, a vessel that was under surveillance at the time. Alhaji Abass owns three vessels and undertakes multi-billion cedi procurement for the Police Service. He said Ndego usually came to visit him when he came for surveillance at the harbour because he has been living in Tema for decades and knows a lot of the going on there.
He explained that he sought Tagor’s help to bait ACP Kofi Boakye because of the continuous threats and intimidation Tagor was receiving from the senior police officer, who suspected Tagor to be spreading rumours about him. Abass indicated that Tagor was so scared of ACP Kofi Boakye that he had to assure him repeatedly that NACOB was behind them.
To re-assure the younger man, Abass said he called Ben Ndego and put him on speakerphone at the Golden Tulip Hotel, Accra, in the presence of Tagor to tell the NACOB man that they were ready for the meeting and he replied that he should carry on.
On July 17, Tagor, in answering a question posed by his lawyer Nana Asante Bediatuo, said that the apparently heated conversation about alleged past dealings in "goods" with Alhaji Abass was all stage-managed by the two accused persons "as a bait" to get ACP Boakye to own up.
Yesterday in court, Abass also confirmed that apart from himself and Tagor, none of the people who took part in the meeting knew anything about the recording. He said he told Ndego that he had recruited another person to help him trap Mr Boakye.
The case has been adjourned to July 24, for continuation of Abass’ evidence-in-chief, led by Mohammed Atta.
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