Prosecute Ato Quarshie ? SFO

In Wednesday?s edition, it was exclusively revealed that a former Minister of State for the NDC government has been found to have allegedly defrauded the Station of around US$40 million. The Serious Fraud Office?s (SFO) report is recommending prosecution.

Dr. Ato Quarshie was the NDC?s appointed Minister of Road and Highways in 1996 when he conspired with the owners of Construction Pioneers, a foreign construction company operating in Ghana, to inflate the value of a number of road-building contracts, or in the lexicon of the agencies involved, to ?load? them to the tune of an extra 48 million deutschmarks.

This amount was added to the true cost of the work, which had been carefully negotiated over a number of months. His alleged ?partner in crime?, the boss of Construction Pioneers, Herr Bernhard Ploetner, has since flown back to his home country Germany, beyond the tentacles of our law enforcement agencies.

After extensive discussions involving Dr Quarshie, the contractors and representatives of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) had yielded an agreed deal for three road building projects to be carried out, Dr. Quarshie allegedly went behind the backs of the GHA to sign the contracts of the GHA to sign the contracts ostensibly on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Ghana ? but only after having amended them to more than double the cost to the government without explanation, or so much as informing the GHA.

However, The Statesman can today reveal the full extent of the administrative smoke and mirrors and sustained alleged deception which was required to commit the crime alleged.

It was the GHA?s Director of Contractors, S. Swanzy-Baffoe, who picked up on the unauthorized revisions when he was sent a copy of the signed final contracts from Dr Quarshie?s Ministry of Roads and Highways, which had added 60% to the figure negotiated by the parties that very day. The GHA?s Chief Executive, BLT Sakibu, wrote to Construction Pioneers to express his horrified reaction to the discovery of these ?radical changes.?