Serious Fraud Office orders interdiction of 14

Accra (Greater Accra), 6th December 99

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has directed the interdiction of 14 officers of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) for various roles they played in the award and implementation of contracts for the Ghana Industrial Commercial Estates Limited (GICEL) project at Weija.

An SFO press statement signed by Mr. B. A. Sapati, Acting Executive Director, said the SSNIT Board, after preliminary investigations into the award of the contracts, referred it to the SFO for further investigations.

The officers include Mr. Paddy Sawyerr, former GICEL board chairman, Mr. David Quagraine, former Co-ordinator and acting Managing Director, Mrs. Valerie Quarmyne, former General Manager/ Administration and Ms Joana Dickson, Chairperson of the tender committee.

The directive also affected ten other members of the tender committee.

They are Mr. John Narku-Tetteh, Mrs. Pearl Osafo-Adu, Mr. Eric Homadi, Mr. Winlaw Anim-Addo and Mr Daniel Essel.

The rest are Mr. Kop Kerr-Rabbles, Mrs. Souad Yahaya, Mr. Francis Kwantwi, Mr. Samuel Appiah Dadey and Mrs. Akosua Sarpong.

The statement said in 1993, the Board of Directors gave its approval for the GICEL project, which is a pilot scheme for the construction of an industrial and commercial estates at Weija.

The project was to provide enrolment for the vast number of workers in the informal sector into the Trust Pension Scheme.

It said Mr. Henry Dei, then Director General of SSNIT, acting in consort with the GICEL Co-ordinator, Mr. Quagraine, by-passed the GICEL in respect of approvals of payment.

Mr. Dei, it said, approved payments on the project without demanding financial reports "which would have alerted the Trust about the malpractices and the high level of the expenditure on the project".

The initial cost of the project, as envisaged by the consultants who designed the project was 5.66 billion cedis.

"However, it has been determined that the actual cost of the project to date far exceeds the initial board approval" it said, adding "the primary estimate as contained in the design report was not properly established".

The statement said this gave room for variations to be made without approval.

It said, for example, Ben Appiah Electricals increased its quota by 100.65 per cent from 397,959,577.40 to 798,419,154.78 cedis, Tropical Developers increased by 60.97 per cent and Sulana Electrical Engineering, by 76.15 per cent.

The statement said Mr. Dei on several occasions, approved payments for goods and materials for which different and inferior brands were supplied.

On October one, 1996, Mr. Dei gave approval for the supply of Industrial Deep Trough aluminium roofing sheets by Messrs Instyle to the tune of 1,199,985,260.05, "yet Instyle was paid 1,455,345,129.18 for supplying circular corrugated roofing sheets, which was not in the specification for the contract".

The SFO investigations will seek to focus among other things on whether the consultants, the project co-ordinator and contractors, fraudulently made variations for personal benefits, and computed excess monies that went into wrong hands with the view to recovering it.

It will also want to know whether suppliers deliberately supplied poor quality products and different brands at higher prices amounting to over pricing and illegally profiting thereby.

The SFO said it would also find out whether certain key personalities benefited financially from the award of the contracts.

The statement assured the general public that it would recover all the financial losses incurred by the Trust and bring to book all those who caused the loss.