Exam Leakage Suspects Freed

An Accra Circuit Tribunal that had been trying a teacher and two school proprietors for allegedly possessing some examination papers of the recently-held Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) yesterday, declared that documents tendered in evidence against the accused persons were fake.

"The documents in the possession of the court are mere trash", the court declared.

The three-member tribunal presided over by Mr. Imoro Ziblim, therefore discharged the accused persons, Mr. Frederick Williams, a footballer and a teacher of the Noble Child Academy, Mr. Emmanuel Quaye Sowah, proprietor of Noble Child Academy and Mr. Felix Armah Amartey, proprietor of Future Graduates Institute, all at Teshie, a suburb of Accra.

The court further ordered that a total amount ?280,000 taken away from the accused persons during their arrest should be given back to them.

The accused persons who were being prosecuted by Inspector E.T. Boison, were charged with selling question papers of some subjects written on the July 2 and 6 BECE namely, Science, Social Studies, English and Mathematics to their victims as the question papers for the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC).

The accused persons, who allegedly collected various sums of moneys from their victims, were then arrested on the 30th of June, this year at Teshie following a tip-off.

The three accused persons, charged on five counts of conspiracy, forgery, possessing forged document, uttering forged document and defrauding by false pretences, were discharged by the court after their counsel, Mr. Joseph Turkson, presented a submission of no case and prayed the court to discharge them.

According to the defence counsel, documents in the possession of his clients were hand-written documents and had no official seal of the WAEC.

Furthermore, counsel submitted that, none of the questions in the documents possessed by the accused persons appeared in the BECE.