EOCO takes over investigations into fraudulent deals at YEA

The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) has taken over investigations into alleged fraudulent deals at the Youth Employment Agency (YEA).

Acting Public Relations Officer (PRO) Mohammed Awal who revealed this to mynewsgh.com, indicated that there are widespread financial malfeasance in the operations of the YEA within the year 2016 and beyond considering the findings from current review.

“EOCO is investigating the criminal aspect of the audit. Currently a team is in the Northern Region conducting an audit into the activities of YEA and I am sure some of the criminal issues raised in other regions have come up there. From the Northern region, they will move to other regions and do that”, he disclosed.

It has also been detected that a total of 2,999 beneficiaries from the district and regional offices for instance have not been at post for several months but were drawing allowances.

The discrepancies were detected in January 2017 while the month’s payments were being prepared following the assumption of office of the new CEO, Mr Justin Koduah Frimpong.

Awal Mohammed said it was detected that about 280 beneficiaries were drawling double allowances with their e-zwich cards under different names.

This led to the suspension of the payment of allowances to 24,000 beneficiaries to the programme after initial efforts where ‘’preliminary audit by Management saved the Agency and the Ghanaian taxpayer, One million, sixty seven thousand and seven hundred Ghana cedis (GH¢ 1,067,700) per month

Meanwhile, he has hinted of a possible prosecution of persons found to be culpable in the manipulation of the system for personal gain.