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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