There are strong indications that the immediate past chairman of the Upper Denkyira constituency branch of the Provisional National Defence Council (P)NDC, Mr Awuku, pulled a fast one on his own party.
The Chronicle can report that the chairman succeeded in stealing one of the party's Nissan pick-ups used for the electioneering campaign and sold it to the district coordinating director (DCD) for Upper Denkyira in the Central region, Mr. L. Y. Bayor, at ?10million.
Chronicle gathered that immediately after the elections in 2000, the Nissan pickup with registration number CR4252A went missing, as no party member could tell its whereabouts.
It was further gathered that the beleaguered Chairman Awuku had meanwhile arranged with some car dealers and sent the vehicle to Obuasi in the Ashanti region for sale.
As fate would have it, DCD Bayor had also left a message with some friends to get him a pick-up for his farming activities. He, therefore, ended up buying the stolen NDC vehicle from the party chairman's agents at Obuasi.
Bayor admitted in an interview with the paper that the vehicle he purchased from an agent at Obuasi was indeed one of the pick-ups used by the NDC for the 2000 campaign.
He told the paper that the police had since seized the vehicle from him and given it back to its rightful owner, the Dunkwa-Offin branch of the NDC.
"They have since seized the vehicle from me, but I am yet to get back the ?10million I paid to the chairman for it," he said.
Bayor told Chronicle that he had been looking for a pick-up to buy, and while the search was on, someone approached him one day in his office to tell him that he had a pick-up for sale.
He said when he went to inspect the vehicle he realized that it was one of those used by the NDC for previous election campaigns.
As a result he questioned those who were selling the vehicle but they told him that Awuku, the Upper Denkyira constituency chairman of the NDC, gave it to them for sale.
"Having been informed of this, what I did was to contact Awuku to find out the authenticity of the information, but when he was reached, he told me that the top hierarchy of the party had doled out the vehicle in question to him as a gift for the service he had rendered to the party," Bayor told this reporter last Thursday afternoon.
Based on what the chairman told him, Bayor said, he had no reason to doubt it and therefore paid ?10million for the vehicle and went ahead to change its registration number.
He debunked the speculation that it was a deal struck between him and the chairman.
"I was looking for a car to buy but unfortunately for me the one I got turned out to be a stolen vehicle," he explained.
All efforts to contact Awuku, for his comment on the story had not been successful, but Chronicle sources close to both the Dunkwa-Offin Police and NDC constituency executives confirmed the story.
Chronicle gathered that in October, last year, a member of the Dunkwa-Offin GPRTU who was privy to what Awuku had done to his party, after spotting the DCD with the vehicle, lodged a complaint at the Dunkwa-Offin central police station against the DCD for receiving the stolen vehicle.
Upon the complaint, the investigation unit of the police service set their machine in motion and invited Bayor for questioning.
After hearing the story of the DCD, the police impounded the vehicle for thorough investigations and also tried to trace Awuku who, it was gathered, had since relocated somewhere in the Volta region.
It was gathered that investigations by the police revealed that Awuku's claim that the vehicle had been given to him as gift was a tall tale. Upon their findings, the police released the impounded vehicle to its owners, the Upper Denkyira branch of the NDC.
Chronicle learnt that a few weeks after the purchase of the vehicle, Bayor changed the documents on it. He also managed to change its registration number from CR4252A to GR7160E.
Insiders who spoke to the paper accused the police of playing it soft on the DCD since, according to them, the case should have been forwarded to court.
They also believed that it was an arrangement between the DCD and the former NDC chairman, but Bayor debunked such allegations.
He insisted that it was what Awuku told him that convinced him to pay for the vehicle and that he had since started making moves to locate Awuku in the Volta region to retrieve the ?10million he paid to him for the vehicle.
