Kwame Addo, a National Democratic Congress (NDC) top-gun and former chairman of the Board of Director of the National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI), has been found neck deep in the tale of gargantuan corruption, insider-dealing and money-laundering at NVTI that has caused the tax payer an amount of over ?19.6bilion.
Kwame Addo is currently ensconced in Europe or America following a tall list of criminal charges made against him by the investigative authorities in Ghana.
A report by Baffour Awuah and Associates, a private accounting firm, commissioned by the auditor-general to pore through the books of NVTI for the period January 1997 to December 2002, has revealed that a certain Moses Baeta, who turned out to be a relation of the wife of Mr. Kwame Addo, took various sum of money from the Institute in excess of ?870,000,000 for no work done. Aside from that, the auditors found that the management of NVTI made a fraudulent payment of ?3,035,173,000 to AccuInfo Ghana (Ghana) Ltd for equipment not delivered. In most cases, there was no documentary evidence to show that the materials were delivered to NVTI, noted the auditors.
So far, the auditors have reckoned that between 1997 and 2002, Messrs Mohammed Mumuni, a former minister of Employment and Social Welfare, Victor Selormey, a former Deputy Minister of Finance, Kwame Addo, Board Chairman of NVTI and five officers of NVTI used the institute as a conduit for siphoning over ?19.6 billion of government funds to known and unknown persons, through huge and fraudulent payments to companies and enterprises, as well as a number of individuals, all in a conspirational web of fraud, tantamount to money-laundering in certain cases.
The auditors indicated that the former director of NVTI, Dr. Michael Yaw Boateng told them that he was under instructions by the then Board Chairman, Mr. Kwame Addo, whom he claims, owned most of the companies to issue cheques for payment for goods, which he knew, had not been supplied.
According to the auditors, the former NVTI director alleged that it was Kwame Addo how made his own arrangements with the minister of finance for the release of the funds through the ministry of employment and social welfare.
Apart from the roles played by Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni and Victor Selormey in the perpetration of fraud at the NVTI, the auditors also held the Board Chairman, Kwame Addo, guilty of facilitating the perpetration of the gargantum fraud
