BIG CHOP CHOP DAY AT LAST!
Today is the big day for some greedy politicians to reap billions of cedis through the fraudulent biometric passport deal between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MFA, and a Ghanaian printing firm, Buck Press Limited, BPL!
It should also be a day of mourning for all Ghanaians as billions of cedis, which could have been used to provide medicines for the sick or school uniforms for needy school children find their ways into the pockets of the greedy few. The contract between the MFA and BPL, Daily Post's investigations revealed, is shrouded in fraud and forgery aimed at swelling the bank accounts of a few leading figures of both the NDC and the NPP Â as well as a couple of Senior national security operatives to the detriment of the state..
This paper's investigations have thrown up startling revelations in the area of fraudulent transactions and dubious payments made on behalf of the Government of Ghana to Buck Press Limited (BPL) for the provision of biometric passport booklets with the collusion of some greedy and unscrupulous characters in both the NPP and the NDC to short-change the people of Ghana.
It was discovered that the Government of Ghana (GOG), during the Presidency of J.A. Kufuor, acting per the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) signed a questionable supply contract with the BPL on 8th April 2005. The contract was for the printing and supply of biometric passport booklets to enable the Government of Ghana to migrate its current mode of issuing passports to meet internationally accepted standards. However, our checks have shown that the process of awarding the contract to BPL was heavily tainted.
A contract sum of almost £7.5million was surreptitiously signed with BPL on the instructions of Nana Akufo Addo, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs. In entering into this agreement, MFA did not do any due diligence to ascertain whether or not BPL has the expertise, skill and experience to meet the needs of the country in supplying this important document. Clearly, BPL, confirmed the fears of the "Doubting Thomases" when it failed miserably to fulfill its part of the bargain.
The other disturbing aspect of the caper is the terms of payment. Whereas the trend all over the world now is to engage such firms on Build, Operate & Transfer (BOT) basis, for obvious reasons, the contract with BPL binds the Government of Ghana to make a down-payment of sixty per cent to it on signing the contract. And true to form and typical of the corrupt gang ruling the nation at the time, huge foreign monies were paid to BPL. Documentary evidence in our custody revealed an amount of £1,608,499.84 having been paid to BPL and another payment of £1,298,210.83 was released to the company on 2nd December 2008. On December, 2008, £1,114,206.13 was again paid to BPL. All this while, the printing firm had not produced a single biometric passport for the Government of Ghana.
Yet, Â Â BPL was not able to produce a single biometric passport for the Government of Ghana within the stipulated time. It must be placed on record that the duration of the BPL contract for the supply of the 1.5million passports booklets was 56 weeks from the commencement date.
Daily Post scouts were stupefied when they sighted another contract document purportedly signed by Nana Akufo Addo’s successor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Akwasi Osei-Agyei with the Malaysian company IRISH Berhad to supply five million biometric passport booklets on behalf of the Government and People of Ghana. This contract, our investigations uncovered, had replaced the earlier one signed under dubious circumstances with BPL in 2005.
The termination of the BPL contract, the paper’s scouts gathered was on the express orders of the powers-that-be in the Castle at the time. They suspected that the BPL agreement had put millions of dollars in the pocket of potential opponents within the NPP. In any case, the strong case for the abrogation was based on the exposure of deficiencies in the procurement agreement by Crown Agents, an audit firm contracted on 11th September 2006 by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to carry out Value for Money (VFM) audit on the contract for the supply of the biometric passport booklets between the MFA and BPL.
It has been established by the audit firm that BPL has no expertise in the industry as it claimed. However, due to their proximity to the corridors of power under the NPP administration, they were selected without recourse to due tendering process. With all these facts available to some well-placed NDC officials, they failed to act. Instead, they abrogated the new contract with the Malaysians and directed BPL to go ahead and supply the passport booklets. Our investigations revealed that the NDC big-wigs involved in the deal were ‘seen’ by Buck Press Ltd and with their bank accounts now bursting at their seams, they reportedly waded into the deal, scavenging on all documents relating to the agreement – they had been bribed by corrupt NPP mandarins and BPL. Top NDC officials both in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and influential persons in the sanctum sanctorum had had their hands soiled.
Other disturbing revelations include the discovery of fraud in the price quotations for passport booklets, equipment and the cost of after sales maintenance. They have all been allegedly inflated. The worst part of it all is that the equipment to be supplied by BPL is only machine-readable but electronically disabled.
Daily Post intelligence has warned that if the matter is not investigated, the newspaper would go ahead to publish all documentary evidence in respect of the agreement and the attendant reports in connection with the fraud allegedly perpetrated against the state. We state this based on intelligence information that National Security Secretariat’s due diligence had shown that the contract arrangement was not in favour of the GOG and thought that it should have been reversed.
In tomorrow’s edition, we shall reveal further how dubious payments were made by GOG officials to BPL. More anon
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