NCA trial was clean, ‘no witch hunting’, ‘we need more of jailing’ – IMANI President

President of IMANI Ghana Mr Franklin Cudjoe has welcomed the court’s decision to jail three former appointees of Former President John Dramani Mahama at the National Communications Authority (NCA) for causing financial loss to the state.

A Commercial High Court in Accra presided over by Justice Eric Kyei Baffour, has convicted three of the five accused persons who have been on trial in the case of ‘The Republic versus Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie and four others’ and sentenced them to a total of 16 years in jail.

Apart from Mr Baffoe-Bonnie, the former Board Chair of the NCA; the other four accused persons were Mr William Tetteh Tevie, former Director-General of the NCA; Nana Owusu Ensaw, a former board member; Alhaji Salifu Mimina Osman, a former Deputy National Security Coordinator, and a businessman, George Derek Oppong.

The five were accused of misappropriating an amount of USD4 million belonging to the NCA.

An Israeli company, NSO Group Technology Limited, was contracted by the erstwhile Mahama-led administration to supply listening equipment at a cost of USD6 million to be used by the National Security Secretariat to monitor the conversations of suspected terrorists.

Infraloks Development Limited charged USD2 million to facilitate the transaction, bringing the total cost to USD8 million.

The NCA, with supervisory jurisdiction over the use of such equipment, was asked to fund the total cost of the transaction since National Security did not have the money to do so. USD1 million out of the withdrawn amount of USD 4million was deposited into the account of NSO Group Technology Limited. According to the Attorney General (AG), the remaining amount of USD 3 million was deposited into the account of the local representative of Infraloks Development Ltd., businessman Mr Oppong.

The case has been in court since December 2017.

In a statement reacting to this matter, Mr Cudjoe said : “It is very instructive that offenders of the public purse under the previous JM administration are facing the music.

“This is no witch hunting at least as far as the NCA case is involved. Just pure collusion to pillage our resources. We need more. But the list under Nana is also growing.”

He added : “It is also on record that the real test of fighting political corruption is in prosecuting your own. I recall Kufuor did with Mallam Issa. JM started with Abuga Pele and co. I only hear stories under Nana. But the battle is still the Lord’s. One day.”