More Troubles For Dr Apraku

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has finally submitted the docket on the Ghana Free Zones Board’s ?3 billion financial scandal to the Attorney General’s office. Another docket which is at the A-G’s office is that of the Tema Municipal Assembly’s (TMA) ?1.8 billion contract.

Highly placed sources at the SFO told the “Evening News” that the investigative body has no role to play again, now that the dockets are with the Attorney General. According to sources, copies of the two dockets have also been given to the President, his vice and the national security outfit.

It said the dockets, which were first submitted to the government, were returned to the SFO for some aspects to be clarified.

On the claims by the Minister of Regional Integration and NEPAD, Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku that he was not given a copy of the docket, the sources said, “It is neither here nor there”. They explained that the fact that Dr Apraku requested for investigations into the ?3 billion scandal did not mean he was exonerated. “A complainant can later become a suspect”, they said.

The sources said it was Dr Apraku and Dr Appiah Kubi, acting Director of the Free Zones Board who prepared the grounds for Raphael Baffour Awuah, the prime suspect in the scandal to travel outside the country.

Awuah has been at large, since the SFO declared him a wanted man after he vanished from the SFO headquarters in Accra. On Friday, July 12, 2002, Awuah sought permission midway through an interrogation session with the SFO to make a telephone call. He was directed to the SFO reception to make a free call, but Awuah took the opportunity offered him and vanished.

The source hinted that Dr Apraku and Mr Appiah Kubi, who aided Baffour Awuah to travel out of the country promised to take care of him, while abroad but the two failed. Later Baffour Awuah decided to confess in writing, which is now in circulation in government circles, copies of which were mailed to the Evening News.