Documents covering an amount of US$ 1.5 million that was sunk into architectural design and feasibility study of the proposed National Olympic Complex can not be found at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, even though a legal threat looms on Government to pay an outstanding debt of US$ 345,000 to Eindhogein Philips BV of Holland for the feasibility study conducted on the project.
Information indicates that US$ 1.5 million is on record to have been paid into the project, but there are no records at the ministry showing how payment was done and the signatories involved.
Sources at the Ministry of Youth and Sports have confirmed that indeed the amount paid for the contract has caused some rabble rousing among top officials of the ministry, especially since it was discovered by the new administration.
The security agencies have investigated the saga and have forwarded their findings to the Auditor General's Department where financial records of the ministry, which until recently had Mr. Enoch Teye Mensah, MP for Ningo Prampram, as its head, are being studied. Chronicle can reveal.
Kofi Aggrey, Public Relations Officer at the ministry, admitted in an interview with this paper last week that financial records on the Olympic Complex are before the Auditor General's Department for study, but stated precisely that he did not know the amount involved or spent on the project as of now.
He advised that the press kept a blind eye on the issue until after the auditing, where information and figures would be made public, via the media.
Enoch Teye Mensah in a telephone interview Monday, this week made his intention not to comment on the issue clear, since, according to him, he has a case with this very relation to a similar publication and would not want to comment.
"Are you aware that you made a similar story and misinformed the public about me. And I have filed a complaint with the National Media Commission and your boss, Kofi Coomson, appeared before it. Go and ask him. I don't want to wake up tomorrow and see anything about me on your front page," E. T. Mensah fumed.
When Chronicle told him that our contact with the Ministry of Youth and Sports indicated that they could not trace the documents showing payment of the US$ 1.5 million, E. T. Mensah held that perhaps it is because of the case lingering before the Media Commission that "nobody wants to talk about it at all."
In a related development, Chronicle has gathered that Government is yet to pay a total of ?20 million to the Nungua Stool Lands and the Regimanuel Gray Estate Limited, being compensation due them for the land acquired for the Olympic Complex.
Documents showing outstanding bills for projects undertaken by the Ministry of Youth and Sports which Chronicle has indicate that the Nungua Stool is supposed to get ?15 billion as compensation with the remaining ?5 billion going to the Regimanuel Gray.
