COP Timbilla denies complicity in police recruitment fraud

The Director General of Human Resource Development of the Ghana Police Service, Patrick Eden Timbilla, has denied his involvement in the recruitment scam that hit the Service last week.

Over 200 unsuspecting 'recruits' gathered at various police training centers across the country after showing admission letters signed by Commissioner of Police (COP) Timbilla.

Immediate investigations launched into the incident resulted in the arrest of two persons.

Last Thursday, March 5, the police announced the arrest of five more persons including two officers within its ranks.

The officers are said to have named COP Timbilla as an accomplice. He was immediately interdicted.

However, the Service's Director of Public Affairs, Reverend David Nenyi Ampah-Bennin, said COP Timbilla has denied involvement whatsoever in the scam.

“It is upon this and other revelations that they have interdicted him but Mr Patrick Timbillah has denied,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Ampah-Bennin told TV3’s Komla Klutse on Friday, March 6.

No house arrest

DCOP Ampah-Bennin also denied that his senior colleague had been put under house arrest.

“I said interdiction. I have not said house arrest.”

According to him, COP Timbilla has been interdicted to “enable the investigating team have full access to him and enable him to cooperate so that we can get to the bottom of the matter.”

Meanwhile, the police say the “breakthrough” it has so far made in the recruitment scam was as a result of a new recruitment system initiated last year.

The system is believed to possess the capacity to expose any attempt to corrupt the process.

“The Police Service wishes to indicate that it is its new recruitment system that has exposed this fraudulent act,” a statement issued by DCOP Ampah-Bennin on Saturday, March 7 said.

“Also it is the Police Service’s Special Investigations Taskforce, under the direct supervision of the IGP that has started exposing this criminal act.” He assured that investigations are still ongoing and no one will be shielded if found culpable.

“Indeed, anybody, whether within or outside the Police Service, found culpable, will be made to face the law.

“We, therefore, urge the public to exercise restraint and wait for our regular updates on the investigations.”