SIMNET Under Pressure To Pay 30 Million

This was published in the New Crusading Guide on Tuesday January 15, 2015

SIMNET Under Pressure To Pay 30 Million

…Back To SSNIT Contributors

As pressure mounts on SIMNET to abandon their US$ 45 million claim against National Lottery Authority (NLA) in a controversial judgment-debt situation, Social Security National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) contributors are beginning to wonder if the GH¢ 30million already paid to SIMNET by a court order has actually been reported to SNNIT and applied to the fund.

The suspicions of SSNIT contributors originates from the view that the GH¢30 million award won against NLA was occasioned by what appears to be a deal well struck by SIMNET using extensive political connection.

Speaking on this matter to CITI FM sometime last week, the former board chair of NLA during the Prof Mills Regime, Dr Agozo opined that the NLA management might have been intimidated by SIMNET, as SIMNET officials seemed to have strong political connections.

He mentioned that SIMNET lawyer Tony Lithur has his in-law as a member of the board of NLA. Deputy Minister of Finance Mona Quartey whose mother is Ghana’s ambassador to Italy also chairs the SIMNET board.

Dr Agozo was of the view that NLA leadership may have been failed in their duty to protect the public purse and had been bullied by political intimidation advanced by Tony Lithur and Deputy Minister Mona Quartey

Now there is a new matter as there are suggestions that the money paid by the court to SIMNET may not have been reported to SNNIT.

A few years ago over 10 million of SNNIT pensions funds were used to acquire SIMNET which operated as a service provider to the NLA but inability to deliver contractual obligations and refusal to permit an audit cased the AGOZO board to terminate their contract.

There are wide raging rumors that the monies paid to SIMNET by the NLA upon the court order may have been misappropriated, please stay tuned in for further and better particulars.

Issue of 14million interest on 14 million principal sums claimed monies paid were due to go into consolidated fund for the use of all Ghanaians and development of Ghana.

It is said that the 2 million paid as legal fees to Tony Lithur and another lawyer even though NLA’s payment of legal fees of GH¢2million to its opponents lawyers were not part of the orders or judgment of the Court

Information reaching us indicates that disgruntled players in the sharing of the 28 million remain unhappy because of the alleged disproportionate sharing of the money by SIMNET which is chaired by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Mona Quartey. It is rumored that a huge part of the money meant to be paid back to SSNIT as majority shareholder of SIMNET has been diverted into private pockets.

It is further alleged that a Deputy Minister muscled the NLA to take a loan from the bank to pay off the GH¢28 million to SIMNET so the players have their share.

Stay tuned.

This was published by the Chronicle of Thursday January 8, 2015

The issue of judgment debt is set to resurrect once again as the National

Lotteries Authority (NLA) and SIMNET battle over US$45million the later has

described as damages for breach of contract between the two entities.

SIMNET, a subsidiary of Social Security and National Insurance Trust

(SSNIT), chaired by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Ms. Mona Quartey, and

their layers Tony Lithur and Samuel Codjoe, are pushing for the said

damages after the NLA had paid a debt of GH?30million for delayed payment

of invoices with interest to the former from an earlier court order.

Inside sources of the NLA have described the move as fraudulent since the

lotteries regulator did not terminate a business agreement it had with

SIMNET to support the smooth delivery of processes required for the

marketing of lottery products in the country.

*Background*

SIMNET, The Chronicle learnt, was contracted to provide technical services

to the then Department of National Lotteries, now the National Lotteries

Authority, in the marketing of its products.

The contract for SIMNET included a set-up of IT infrastructure with systems

to sell lottery tickets and they were also expected to perform draws,

procurement of terminals for the retailers and the marketing of the

products introduced in the market.

SIMNET was also expected to automate the draw and to also import terminals

for quick penetration of the market so as to minimize the impact of “banker

to banker” operations nationwide.

However, due to the delays in rolling out terminals for the penetration of

l8the country on the part of SIMNET, the NLA Board of Directors took a

decision sometime in 2007 to implement the automation program following

which decision it imported 10,000 terminals for distribution to retailers

so as to shut down the manual system, according to our sources.

Ingenico of France, according to our sources, won the bid and was awarded

the contract to implement this objective.

SIMNET, we learnt, continued to provide the technical services to NLA, now

under a new Board appointed by President Mills and Chaired by Dr. Agodzo.

According to our sources, sometime in 2011, the Board of NLA, in keeping

with best practices, called for an audit of the SIMNET process in order to

ascertain that all was well with the SIMNET infrastructure and that, Ghana

was not losing revenue.

This request, was informed by a data analysis performed by Ernst and Young

on existing sampled lottery data, which raised some fundamental concerns,

including training machines, trading and paying wins and other issues.

However, SIMNET was said to have refused to co-operate with the audit

process as they cited witch-hunting, among other concerns.

The Board of NLA, as a result, decided to withhold payments from SIMNET in

view of SIMNET’s refusal to co-operate with the audit process, which

development led to a significant bad-blood developing between SIMNET and

the NLA Board, which forced SIMNET to proceed to court to seek redress.

Sources within SSNIT and NLA said both parties agreed in court to recruit

an independent firm (a firm other than Ernst & Young) to undertake the

audit exercise, which finally led to the granting of SIMNET’s request of

some payment of its overdue invoices to be made by the NLA to enable them

meet some operational commitments, which this paper learnt, was honoured by

the NLA.

Our information is that, whilst the court proceedings and the audit process

continued, SIMNET unilaterally shut down the lottery system in the first

week of October 2012, informing first NLA via SMS followed by a letter.

The Chronicle is well informed that this was done to embarrass the NLA

leadership and to create a crisis situation for the NLA as the INGENICO

program was not yet fully implemented to serve as a viable alternative, a

development which made the NLA’s revenue suffering a dent.

The dip in revenue was short-lived, according to inside sources, because

the Board had earlier initiated the implementation of the LOTS-Services

platform, which brought the needed extra capacity to absorb the displaced

retailers from the SIMNET platform.

It would be recalled that, Dr. Agodzo, Board Chairman at the time,

addressed a press conference to explain and to apologize for the

disturbances in the services that were occasioned by the shutdown and

announced that, the NLA would find alternative solutions to the situation

in the absence of SIMNET platform.

*The legal suit*

Judgment on the law suit was not delivered before the appointment of a new

Board by President John Dramani Mahama when he took over the Presidency.

As the matter progressed in Court, both parties, the NLA and SIMNET, agreed

on the appointment of Price Waterhouse as another expert to conduct another

independent audit following disagreements on some aspects of the work done

by KPMG.

Price Waterhouse was said to have extracted data from the system to do

their work and after the completion of the first draft, SIMNET protested

that, additional data was available that needed to be taken into account

and requested another extraction of data by Price Water House.

The Chronicle is informed that after this second extraction, SIMNET became

satisfied and the final report submitted by Price Water House favored

SIMNET while the judge ruled that, the delayed invoices be paid with

interest and the NLA was believed to have paid this amount to SIMNET

estimated at thirty million Ghana Cedis (GHc 30 million).

Included in this amount, this paper learnt, is another two million Ghana

Cedis (GHC 2 million) paid to SIMNET as the legal fees for their lawyers.

But as if this was not enough, a second law suit against the NLA was filed

by Mr. Tony Lithur on behalf of SIMNET, which went dormant to give way for

the first suit that had been rejuvenated after the first judgment was

attained.

The second case was asking the NLA to pay US$45million to SIMNET as damages

caused it by the NLA for engaging the services of INGENICO for the

provision of the out-standings that SIMNET failed to deliver.

Speaking on Citi Eyewitness News, a former Board Chairman of the NLA, Dr.

Sali Agbozo, insisted that the SIMNET contract was not terminated and

therefore, do not understand why ICT firm chaired by Madam Helen Mona

Quartey and their lawyers would institute legal action against the

lotteries regulator for damages.

This was published by The New Independent of Thursday January 8, 2015

NLA Boss Under Pressure to Dish $45m to SIMNET

…Over Judgment Debt; Tony Lithur, Deputy Finance Minister, SNNIT D-G Fingered

Story by Kobina Gyasi

Conspiracy and subtle moves are far advance and pressure is being mounted on the Director General of the National Lottery Authority (NLA), Brigadier General Martin Ahiaglo, to pay SIMNET, a company owned by SNNIT, a huge sum of Forty-five million dollars ($45m) for breach of contract.

Ironically, it turns out the lawyers for SIMNET, who are asking NLA to pay this huge sum of money, are Tony Lithur, President John Mahama’s lawyer and Samuel Codjoe.

Surprisingly, the Chairman of the Board of SIMNET is Madam Mona Helen Quartey, the Deputy Minister of Finance in charge of the revenue agencies, including the NLA.

Furthermore, the Director General of SNNIT, Ernest Thompson happens to be the former Board Secretary to SIMNET.

It is also believed that, Mr. Kenneth Thompson of Dalex Finance, who is the brother in-law of Tony Lithur, was strategically given a seat on the NLA Board, to help push this SIMNET judgment debt payment agenda, sources within the NLA have hinted The New Independent.

Information available to this paper indicate that, the MD of SIMNET is one Sedalor.

The scheme is quite elaborate and our information is that, a negotiating team has already been put in place to arrive at the outcomes desired by the key places.

Currently the Board of NLA is divided on this issue as some members deem it a fraudulent settlement that could completely erode the revenue stream that has been generated by the NLA, a critical revenue agency for the Ministry of Finance.

This is the second case in which the lawyers (Tony Lithur and Samuel Codjoe) of SIMNET are asking the NLA to pay US$45million to SIMNET as damages caused it by the NLA for engaging the services of INGENICO for the provision of the outstandings that SIMNET failed to deliver.

It would be recalled that, in the first case, SIMNET, which is a SNNIT owned company, was contracted by the then DNL, which has metamorphosed into NLA, to set up IT infrastructure with systems to sell lottery tickets, perform draws, procurement of terminals for the retailers and marketing of the products introduced in the market.

The New Independent learnt that, SIMNET was also expected to automate the draws and to also import terminals for quick penetration of the market so as to minimize the impact of ‘banker to banker’ operations nationwide.

This paper learnt that, due to delays in rolling out of terminals for the penetration of the country on the part of SIMNET, the NLA Board made a decision sometime in 2007, to implement the automation program and also imported 10,000 terminals for distribution to retailers so as to shut down the manual system.

The New Independent has learnt that, INGENICO of France won the bid and was awarded the contract to implement this objective.

Meanwhile, SIMNET continued to provide the technical services to NLA now under a new Board appointed by President Mills and Chaired by Dr. Agodzo and sometime in 2011, the Board of NLA, in keeping with best practices, called for an audit of the SIMNET process in order to ascertain that, all was well with the SIMNET infrastructure and to find out if the nation was not losing revenue, this paper learnt.

This request was informed by a data analysis performed by Ernst and Young on existing sampled lottery data, which raised some fundamental concerns, including training machines trading and paying wins and other issues and KPMG was appointed to undertake the audit, The New Independent was hinted.

Information available say, SIMNET refused to co-operate with the audit process as they cited witch- hunting, among other concerns following which development the Board of NLA decided to withhold payments from SIMNET as a result of SIMNET’s refusal to co-operate with the audit process.

As a significant bad-blood developed between SIMNET and the NLA Board, SIMNET proceeded to Court to seek redress but both parties agreed in court to recruit an independent firm (a firm other than Ernst & Young) to undertake the audit exercise, this paper learnt.

The New Independent further learnt that, the court granted SIMNET’s wish that some payment of its overdue invoices be made by the NLA to enable them meet some operational commitments, a directive the NLA complied.

The New Independent also learnt that, whilst the court proceedings and the audit process continued, SIMNET unilaterally shut down the lottery system in the first week of October 2012, informing first the NLA via SMS to be followed by a letter.

It was popularly believed that, this was done to embarrass the NLA leadership and to create a crisis situation for the NLA as the INGENICO program was not yet fully implemented to serve as a viable alternative.

As a result, The New Independent was hinted that, NLA’s revenue suffered a dent in view of this development, but the dip in revenue was short-lived, because the Board had earlier initiated the implementation of the LOTs-Services platform, which brought the needed extra capacity to absorb the displaced retailers from the SIMNET platform.

Judgment on the law suit was not delivered before the appointment of a new Board by President Mahama when he took over the Presidency, this paper can disclose.

As the matter progressed in court, , The New Independent was hinted during enquiries that, both parties agreed on the appointment of PriceWaterhouse as another expert to conduct another independent audit following disagreements on some aspects of the work done by KPMG.

PriceWaterhouse extracted data from the system to do their work and after completion of the first draft, SIMNET was said to have protested that, additional data was available that needed to be taken into account and therefore requested another extraction of data by Pricewaterhouse.

Our sources say, after the second extraction, SIMNET became satisfied and the final report submitted by PricewaterHouse favored SIMNET, which development forced the judge to rule that, the delayed invoices be paid with interest, and the NLA was believed to be paying this amount to SIMNET estimated at thirty million Ghana Cedis.

Included in this amount, this paper found out, is another two million Ghana Cedis paid to SIMNET as the legal fees for their lawyers.

All attempts to reach the Director General of SNNIT, Mr. Ernest Thompson, to confirm whether the amount of thirty million Ghana Cedis (GHc 30m) has hit the accounts of SNNIT have proved futile as he failed to pick his office phone after several calls had been placed to it.

The New Independent has the information that, a second law suit against the NLA filed by Tony Lithur on behalf of SIMNET, which went dormant to give way for the first suit discussed above, has been rejuvenated after the first judgment was attained.

Indications this paper is picking are that, the Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper is unhappy about this development, but his Deputy, Madam Mona Quartey, seems to be more interested in this case and wants NLA to pay the US$45m to SIMNET, the company of which she is the Board Chairman.

Our checks have revealed that, the negotiating team has already met twice and indications are that, the DG of NLA, Brigadier Gen. Ahiaglo is apparently under pressure from the Deputy Finance Minister and Chair of SIMNET Board to dish out US$45 million dollars to SIMNET.

Caption: Madam Mona Quartey, Deputy Finance Minister

This was published by The New Independent of January 15, 2015

Where is the GHc 30 Mn Paid to SIMNET?

*How was it used, has it benefitted SSNIT Contributors?

As pressure mounts on SIMNET to abandon its intended 45-million dollar claim against the National Lottery Authority (NLA), which obse;2rvers say, may be procured in perhaps a classic ‘Woyome’ style judgment-debt situation, SSNIT contributors are beginning to wonder if the 30 million cedis already paid to SIMNET by a court order has actually been reported to SNNIT and applied to the fund.

The suspicions of SSNIT contributors stem from the view that, the 30 million cedi award won against NLA was occasioned by what appears to be a deal well struck by SIMNET using extensive political connections.

Speaking on this matter to CITI FM sometime last week, the former Board Chair of NLA during the Prof. Mills regime, Dr. Agozo opined that, the NLA management might have been intimidated by SIMNET, as SIMNET officials seemed to have strong political connections at the time.

He mentioned that, SIMNET’s lawyer, Tony Lithur has his in law as part of the Board of NLA while Deputy Minister of Finance, Madam Mona Quartey, whose mother is Ghana’s Ambassador in Italy, also chairs the SIMNET Board.

Dr. Agozo was of the view that, NLA leadership may have been derelict in their duty to protect the public purse and had been bullied by political intimidation advanced by some on the NLA Board and the Deputy Minister, Madam Mona Quartey.

The New Independent has learnt that, now there is a new twist to the matter as there are suggestions that, the money paid by the court’s order to SIMNET may not have been reported to SNNIT.

This paper has learnt that, sometime in 2007 or 2008, over 10 million of SNNIT pension funds was used to acquire SIMNET, which operated as a service provider to the NLA, but its inability to deliver contractual obligations and refusal to permit an audit forced the Agozo-led Board to terminate their contract.

The New Independent has been hinted amidst wide raging rumors that, the monies paid to SIMNET by the NLA upon the court order may have been misappropriated.

This paper is still investigating the matter and will publish outcome of findings.

Speaking in an interview with The New Independent on the matter, Lawyer Samuel Cudjoe, one of the Lawyers who filed the case on behalf of SIMNET to claim an additional $45million from NLA for breach of contract, stated that, SNNIT owns about 85% of shares in SIMNET and because the National Lottery Authority decided not to pay SIMNET close to one year, SIMNET almost collapsed and so SNNIT borrowed it some money to start from the scratch.

He was of the view that, because SIMNET is a limited company it is not under any obligation to inform SNNIT upon receiving any 30 million cedis.

He added that, it is because NLA refused to pay SIMNET for almost a year and that is why a new case has been initiated against NLA to claim 45 million United States Dollars.

Caption: USE THE PICTURE OF MADAM MONA QUARTEY, Deputy Finance Minister

This was published by the Chronicle of January 16, 2015

GH¢30million SSNIT money gone missing?

Speculations are rife within the corridors of SIMNET that the GH¢30million paid by the National Lotteries Authorities (NLA) at the instance of a Court has neither reflected in the accounts of the ICT firm nor its parent company, the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).

The above mentioned amount with interest was advanced to the ICT firm for delayed payment of invoices.

Lawyers for SIMNET led by Mr. Tony Lithur are currently in court pursuing the NLA for US$45million as damages for breach of contract between the two entities.

The suspicion was occasioned by the influential personalities behind SIMNET using their political connections to maneuver their way through.

A former Board Chairman of the NLA, Dr. Sali Agbozo, in an interview with Citi Eyewitness News last week over the matter said the management of the NLA might have been intimidated by SIMNET because of the political personalities behind the firm.

SIMNET is chaired by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Mona Quartey with Tony Lithur and Samuel Cudjoe, being their lawyers.

Dr. Agbozo insisted that the SIMNET contract was never terminated and wondered why the ICT firm was in court again pursuing the NLA for additional $45million having already won GH¢30 million with interest from the lottery regulator.

He explained that when he took over in 2009, they were supposed to complete an automation of the lottery system with the aim of halting the lapses in the system.

He said, “before we got there, there has been various correspondence between NLA and SIMNET to bring more portable point of sale terminals for the lotto business,” adding that “NLA before our tenure had already gone to PPA to secure approval for the purchase of 2,000 point of sale terminals for the lotto business.”

He said they later increased the number of terminals to 10,000 “because we need to cover the whole country. We actually corresponded with them [SIMNET] on several occasions to bring in more terminals, and we informed them that we were ready to go and purchase terminals…we didn’t hear from them so we acted as such.”

He said even after securing the terminals, they wrote a letter to SIMNET informing them of the move “and for that matter, we assured them that we will run our business whereby they will operate their equipment and the NLA too will handle their own business, so we never terminated any contract with them.”

“What happened was that they were unhappy, so they were using various means to frustrate us,” he was quoted as saying by Citi Eyewitness News.

He added “because they owed SIMNET, they issued post-dated cheques, which SIMNET was cashing”.

He said his outfit later told SIMNET to submit an IT audit report, but the situation ended up in court, adding that, “when we requested the audit, they refused to comply and before we realized they took us to court,” he lamented adding, “we told the court that if they do the audit we will pay them.”

According to our sources, sometime in 2011, the Board of NLA, in keeping with best practices, called for an audit of the SIMNET process in order to ascertain that all was well with the SIMNET infrastructure and that, Ghana was not losing revenue.

This request was informed by a data analysis performed by Ernst and Young on existing sampled lottery data, which raised some fundamental concerns, including training machines, trading and paying wins and other issues.

However, SIMNET was said to have refused to co-operate with the audit process as they cited witch-hunting, among other concerns.

The Board of NLA, as a result, decided to withhold payments from SIMNET in view of SIMNET’s refusal to co-operate with the audit process, which development led to a significant bad-blood developing between SIMNET and the NLA Board, which forced SIMNET to proceed to court to seek redress.

Sources within SSNIT and NLA said both parties agreed in court to recruit an independent firm (a firm other than Ernst & Young) to undertake the audit exercise, which finally led to the granting of SIMNET’s request of some payment of its overdue invoices to be made by the NLA to enable them meet some operational commitments, which this paper learnt, was honoured by the NLA.

Our information is that, whilst the court proceedings and the audit process continued, SIMNET unilaterally shut down the lottery system in the first week of October 2012, informing first NLA via SMS followed by a letter.

The Chronicle is well informed that this was done to embarrass the NLA leadership and to create a crisis situation for the NLA as the INGENICO program was not yet fully implemented to serve as a viable alternative, a development which made the NLA’s revenue suffering a dent.

The dip in revenue was short-lived, according to inside sources, because the Board had earlier initiated the implementation of the LOTS-Services platform, which brought the needed extra capacity to absorb the displaced retailers from the SIMNET platform.

It would be recalled that, Dr. Agbodzo, Board Chairman at the time, addressed a press conference to explain and to apologize for the disturbances in the services that were occasioned by the shutdown and announced that, the NLA would find alternative solutions to the situation in the absence of SIMNET platform.

Judgment on the law suit was not delivered before the appointment of a new Board by President John Dramani Mahama, when he took over the Presidency.

As the matter progressed in Court, both parties, the NLA and SIMNET, agreed on the appointment of Price Waterhouse, as another expert, to conduct another independent audit following disagreements on some aspects of the work done by KPMG.

Price Waterhouse was said to have extracted data from the system to do their work and after the completion of the first draft, SIMNET protested that additional data was available that needed to be taken into account and requested another extraction of data by Price Water House.

The Chronicle is informed that after this second extraction, SIMNET became satisfied and the final report submitted by Price Water House favored SIMNET, while the judge ruled that, the delayed invoices be paid with interest and the NLA was believed to have paid this amount to SIMNET estimated at thirty million Ghana Cedis (GHc 30 million).

Included in this amount, this paper learnt, is another two million Ghana Cedis (GHc 2 million) paid to SIMNET as the legal fees for their lawyers.