Cocaine swap: CID Boss sacked

The Inspector General of Police, Paul Tawiah Quaye, has relived two senior police officers, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Vincent Dedzo, Deputy CID Chief, and Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Kofi Adzi Tuadzra of their duties.

The decision of the Chief Constable was to enable investigations into the cocaine scandal that rocked the Police Service.

It followed a petition to the President by DSP Gifty Mawuenyegah Tehoda against her dismissal from the Police Service. She mentioned the name of ACP Dedzo, Deputy Director-General of the Criminal

Investigations Department (CID), as being the principal character behind the swapping of the cocaine with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).

A source at the police headquarters told Daily Guide that DSP Kofi Tuadzra was also interdicted because he was the head of the Narcotic Unit at the time of the incident.

DSP Tehoda also accused the Director of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), Yaw Donkor, of also compromising his position during the investigations into the scandal, but he remains at post.

The Chief Constable was said to have taken the decision which took effect from Tuesday on arrival in the country from a trip abroad.

In a six-page petition to President John Mahama, DSP Tehoda described her dismissal “as a grand scheme by the CID to use me as a pawn to cover up obvious wrongdoings within the set-up”.

In the said petition dated September 25, 2012, Mrs. Tehoda noted, “Recently, I was served with a letter from a Central Disciplinary Board of the Police Service, purporting to dismiss me from the service pursuant to a purported review of a service enquiry.”

According to her, when she was eventually released from BNI cells, she had a conversation with Mr. Awolenga who told “me that because of the hype of the case in the media, it was possible that people might come to whisper into my ears about how the cocaine got swapped”.

“He asked that in case I chanced upon any information, I should co-operate with them and make it available. Indeed, not quite long after my bail, some young men approached my pastor and indicated that they know people in the cocaine underworld who had credible information on the missing cocaine,” she noted.

For this reason, DSP Tehoda said she did not hesitate to lead them to the BNI operatives, adding that in the course of time, they through the assistance of those informants, the BNI operatives got into contact with sources in the cocaine underworld who volunteered startling and damning revelation.

She indicated that ACP Dedzo “stole the missing cocaine. At the time, that was the latter part of 2008, he was the Head of the Narcotic Unit of the CID.”