More ‘chop chop’exposed at NSS

It has emerged that siphoning of funds at the National Service Scheme (NSS) started years back and that some of the cases, though investigated, were not prosecuted.

A case in point was between June 2010 and July 2011, where investigations revealed that a sum of Ghc101,001.56 identified as ‘salaries,’ was credited to the personal accounts of four senior NSS staff.

The four senior officers shared the money as follows: Ghc47,188.26; Ghc32,209.32; Ghc13,128.40; and Ghc8,475.58.

Intelligent sources told The Finder that senior officers of the secretariat in Accra opened a special bank account in Accra in the name of the secretariat.

According to the sources, every month, payments described as ‘salaries’ were on several occasions debited from this special NSS account into the personal accounts of these staff, who also had accounts with the same bank.

For instance, on a particular day, monies totalling Ghc5,797.10, described as ‘salaries,’ were credited into the account of one person 29 times on that single day.

This is what Anti-Money Laundering (AML) experts call structuring. In other words, the monies were credited piecemeal.

The sources explained that the credited funds were immediately withdrawn via ATMs in various locations in the country.

The sources told The Finder that law enforcement agencies investigated the matter, and the staff refunded almost all the stolen monies to the NSS.

In spite of the action taken at the time, charges of money laundering could have been preferred against these staff to empower the law enforcement agencies to identify and confiscate all other assets derived from this unlawful act.

The scheme has recently been rocked by a scandal regarding the payment of nearly GH?8 million to 22,000 non-existing national service persons in July, 2014.

Consequently, 27 district directors of the NSS who have been picked up by operatives of the BNI for siphoning millions of cedis through ghost names are under investigations.