Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, March 19, 2015
It has emerged that
the document submitted by Philip Akpeena Assibit, CEO of Goodwill
International Group (GIG), who is standing trial for his role in the infamous GYEEDA scandal, was a plagiarized
youth policy document from Serbia, Europe, for which he managed to claim $2 million
from the government.
The court also heard
how Assibit requested for payment for preparing the Youth Employment Strategy
and Action Plan (the copied Serbian document) because he claimed he had helped
the government to secure $65 million facility from the World Bank when
according to the prosecution, the claim was false.
Assibit was
subsequently paid the amount in 2011 even before the Finance Minister wrote in
2012 to the World Bank requesting for funds towards the preparation of a
proposal to access the very $65million facility the accused allegedly said had
helped to secure in 2011.
Mrs Diana Adu Anane,
an investigator at the Economic and Organized Crime Organization (EOCO)
disclosed this at an Accra Financial Court yesterday where Assibit is being
tried alongside Abuga Pele, the former National Coordinator of
National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) now GYEEDA.
Led in evidence by
Mrs. Evelyn Keelson, a Chief State Attorney, the seventh Prosecution Witness
(PW7) told the court that Abuga Pele, who is also NDC MP for Chiana Paga even
wrote a memo advising the Ministry of Youth and Sports to pay Assibit’s GIG
because the 3% requested was ‘moderate’ since Assibit had earlier requested for
15%.
She told the packed
court presided over by Justice Afia Serwah Asare Botwe that Assibit’s letter
requesting for claims were grounded on three main areas.
“In the first claim
he said he launched an effective Exit Strategy for GYEEDA Modules. In the
second claim, he said he recruited 250 youth for training and in the third, he
said he secured a World Bank facility for GYEEDA,” the investigator said.
Exit Strategies
She told the court
that EOCO investigations revealed that Assibit did not design Exit Strategies
for any GYEEDA Modules as claimed and said when the programmes started in 2006
on the advice of the National Security it already had its own strategies to
exit the beneficiaries.
She said the Modules
were further strengthened in 2009 when all service providers were instructed to
have exit strategies before being given contracts saying “it is strange Philip
Assibit will claim to be the originator of Exit Strategies for all Modules.”
She said when the
accused was questioned on the strategies, he told investigators that he
(Assibit) verbally advised the NYEP Coordinator (Abuga Pele) on the exit
strategies, adding “on the oil and gas training he did not design any exit
strategies.”
The witness said that
all the service providers denied that Assibit helped them to prepare their Exit
Strategies and said some of them even said they did not know Assibit.
Youth Recruitment
Mrs. Adu Anane told
the court that Assibit had written to claim payment for recruiting 250 youth
for training for the Youth Enterprise Programme (YEP) and said even though some
work was done Assibit was subsequently paid for his services.
She said a payment
voucher of GH¢59,976 was raised for the exercise and Assibit pocketed GH¢51,000
on February 27, 2011 as Managing Consultant and the cash was handed to him by
Mohammed Pelpuo who has already testified in the case saying “he signed and
received as per diem.”
She said that even
though the claim was that Management Development and Productivity
Institute (MDPI) was involved in the recruitment could not be true because the
MDPI did not sanction their participation adding “this claim had already been
paid for.”
World Bank Facility
The witness said that
it is false for Assibit to claim to be the originator of the World Bank
facility proposal because when they (accused and others) visited then Vice
President John Mahama, he told them about the existence of the facility.
“Philip Assibit gave
us a document with the title: Youth
Employment Strategy Action Plan to justify the work he supposedly did with the
assistance of MDPI to access the World Bank facility.”
She said they
realized that the document had the names of Assibit, Abuga Pele and then
Minister Clement Humado but were not singed and when pressed further, Abuga
Pele said it was Assibit who prepeared the document.
However, she said Mr.
Humado and the MDPI all denied knowledge of the document and when they did
internet search they found that Assibit had copied a Serbian Youth Policy
document verbatim and replaced every portion where there is the word Serbia
with Ghana and presented as the proposal document to secure payment.
She said “as at April
13, 2011 when he was claiming to have secured the facility, Ghana was then in
2012 writing to ask for funds to start the preparatory works for the same
facility,” the witness said.
She said on EOCO’s
request, the World Bank even wrote on January 7, 2014 that Ghana was at the
early preparatory stage to access the facility.
GIG (MDPI Project) account
She said the first
installment of GH¢826,000 was paid into GIG (MDPI Project) account at Zenith Bank
while the remaining four installments were paid into GIG (MDPI Project) account
at UT Bank saying “though the account name was GIG (MDPI Project), MDPI had
nothing to do with the money.
She said the signatories
to the Zenith Bank account were Assibit, one Lawrence Nsiah and one Isaac while
for the UT Bank account, Assibit, the same Lawrence Nsiah and one Daudawere the
signatories and added that investigations showed Assibit just used the other
signatories to open the accounts.
“We found out that
the over $2million went for the benefit of Assibit.”
The court also
admitted in evidence the controversial document Terms of work document which the
investigator said was supposed to be the working document of the MoU signed
between NYEP and Assibit’s GIG
Sitting continues on
April 14, 2014 for Mrs Adu Anane to be cross-examined.
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