Tuesday, October 28, 2014

'ABUGA PELE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR GYEEDA FRAUD'

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Clement Kofi Humado yesterday said the former National Coordinator of National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) Abuga Pele should be held responsible for any financial loss caused to the state.
He said some of the memos and invoices submitted by the National Coordinator of the NYEP now GYEEDA, to request for release and payment of huge sums for supposed consultancy service turned out to be deceptive and could therefore not be held responsible for Abuga Pele’s wrongdoing.
“I can’t be held responsible for a claim which is deceptive and later turned out to be false. I based my judgement on the credibility of Abuga Pele. The deliverables he claimed were done I do not know for a fact what he had done,” he told the court.
Mr. Humado was concluding his cross-examination yesterday at the ongoing trial of Philip Akpeena Assibit, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GIG and incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) for Chiana-Paga, Abuga Pele in what has become the GYEEDA Scandal at an Accra Financial Court presided over by Justice Afia Asare Botwe.
The $522,882 Payment
Concluding his cross-examination by Carl Adongo, counsel for Abuga Pele, Mr. Humado who is also the immediate past Minister of Agriculture and MP for Anlo said that he was only two months in office when the National Coordinator raised the memo requesting for payment of a whopping $522,882 for consultancy services rendered by the Management Development and Productivity Institute/Goodwill International Group (MDPI/GIG) consortium.
He admitted approving the $522,882 payment but said the approval was supposed to pass through what he called the ministry’s due diligence process starting from the Chief Director and the Internal Auditor.
Asked why he approved the $522,882, Mr. Humado told the court that there was a memo from Abuga Pele justifying work done and that persuaded him to make the approval saying “I approved because of the claims made by the National Coordinator not that I knew the deliverables had been done. I was barely two months in office. As a colleague MP I believed that he was doing the right thing.”
Salary approval
Mr. Humado who is the 4th Prosecution Witness said that as minister, he had oversight responsibility over four agencies including NYEP/GYEEDA but insisted that he did not approve their salaries but rather they had developed a payment plan to take care of all expenses.
“I did not approve GYEEDA monthly salaries. I asked them to submit monthly payment plans and salaries were included.” He told the court.
He said it was the National Coordinator who approved salaries for GYEEDA because GYEEDA was almost autonomous saying “approval for payment plan does not mean that specific payments can be done.”
Crossfire
When counsel asked him why he claimed GYEEDA was autonomous but approved its payments, Mr. Humado said inflows from them was outside the ministry’s account and he could only monitor with the aid of the payment plan.
Counsel again put it to him that the $522,882 was not on the payment plan but went ahead to approve the payment but the witness insisted that the approval was made to allow due diligence to commence before the payment.
Mr. Humado admitted that it was his Chief Director who had given a working instruction that the amount be paid into MDPI account and added the funds were from the NYEP but the memo had to be submitted to the ministry for approval.
He insisted that Abuga Pele did not comply with the ministry’s directive not to authorized payments exceeding GH¢20,000 saying “initially, there was no problems but later at EOCO, they said there were problems with all the payments authorized by the National Coordinator.”
Court’s question
When the judge asked him if it was his evidence that the NYEP Coordinator was not supposed to spend beyond the threshold of GH¢20,000 as directed by the ministry, Mr. Humado said that was the case but added that Abuga Pele crossed the threshold.
When asked again what he did as minister after his directive was breached, the witness said whilst he was minister, the issue of overspending by Abuga Pele never come to his notice.
Charges
The Chiana-Paga MP is facing six counts of wilfully causing financial loss to the state under Section 179A (3) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 Act 29, two counts of abetment under Sections 20(1) and 131(1) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) and one count of intentionally misapplying public property, contrary to Section 1(2) of the Public Property Protection Act, 1977 (SMCD) 140.
Mr. Assibit, who is the first accused person on the other hand, is facing six counts of defrauding by false pretences, contrary to Section 131(1) of the Criminal and Offences Act 1960 (Act 29) and five counts of dishonestly causing loss to public property contrary to Section 2(1) of the Public Property Protection Act, 1977 (SMCD) 1.

Accused persons
The accused persons are on trial for the various roles they played, which the Attorney General’s Department said caused huge financial loss to the state.
The NDC MP is accused of wilfully causing financial loss to the state to the tune of GH¢3,330,568.53 while Assibit is being tried for defrauding the state of an amount equivalent to $1,948,626.68.

The two have pleaded not guilty and are currently on bail.

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