By William
Yaw Owusu
Wednesday
January 24, 2018
The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO)
yesterday issued a statement denying a publication in DAILY GUIDE in the matter
of some top officers accused of misappropriating GH¢480,177.87 of the Electoral
Commission’s (EC’s) staff Endowment Fund.
A statement issued in Accra and signed by ACP K.K.
Amoah (Rtd), Acting Executive Director of EOCO, stated, “The attention of the
authority at the EOCO has been drawn to the banner headline of the 23rd January,
2018 edition of the DAILY GUIDE newspaper that ‘EOCO Clears EC Top Officers.’ “We
wish to emphatically and categorically state that no such clearance has been
issued by this Office to any of the Officers of the Electoral Commission.”
Mr. Amoah also said, “The attribution that ‘EC
Chairperson is said to be manipulating EOCO’ is blatant falsehood and needs to
be condemned. The general public is invited to disregard the said publication. EOCO
will issue a statement on this matter.”
According to sources, even though the anti-graft
body carried out the investigation on the EC’s case, it is distancing itself
from the leakage of the document since its report was only submitted to the Attorney
General upon whose advice the docket was raised.
The EOCO docket, signed by Evelyn D. Keelson, a chief
state attorney, on behalf of the AG, concluded, “We are of the view that until
a comprehensive audit is conducted into the Endowment Fund of the staff of the
Electoral Commission, it will be difficult to firmly establish the commission of
any malfeasance.”
Georgina Opoku-Amankwaah, Deputy Commissioner
in-charge of Finance and Administration, together with Kwaku Owusu Agyei-Larbi,
Chief Accountant and Dr Joseph Kwaku Asamoah, Finance Director, were hounded
out of office by the EOCO on the instructions of the EC chairperson, Charlotte
Osei, over the GH¢480,177.87 and their continuous stay out of office is
beginning to raise eyebrows since nothing was found against any of the three
top officials.
Interestingly, the advice from the Attorney General’s
Department on the investigative report of the EOCO did not make the three
officials suspects in the case.
In fact, in the eight-page document sighted by DAILY
GUIDE, Mrs. Opoku Amankwaah and the two others were treated as
witnesses by the EOCO.
The document, dated January 10, 2018, specifically
mentioned Samuel Yorke Aidoo, the then Director of Finance, as well as Ishmael
Pensah, a former Chief Accountant who no longer works with the EC, as the
suspects who were investigated by the EOCO.
The title of the docket which reads, ‘The Republic
vrs Samuel Yorke Aidoo and Ishmael Pensah,’ captures Mrs. Osei as the officer
who had filed the complaint before the EOCO.
DAILY
GUIDE is insisting that there are ‘unseen’ hands behind
the prevention of the affected officers from going back to work.
When Mrs. Opoku Amankwaah decided to defy the EC and
the EOCO to resume work last week, it was the EOCO boss who commandeered a
police/military team to remove the deputy chairperson from office.
Recently, the deputy EC boss, frustrated by alleged
manipulation of the EOCO investigation, defied the ‘stay at home’ order to
return to work only for the anti-graft body to chase her out, even though no
adverse findings had been made against her.
Mrs Charlotte Osei is said to have registered her
displeasure for calling the affected people back because she doesn’t want to
work with them.
Ms Opoku-Amankwaah
said she was tired of the embarrassment visited on her by her continued
interdiction and decided to resume work, saying that under the law it is only
the President of the Republic who can send her packing.
However, the EOCO
officers said they were still investigating the alleged misappropriation of the
EC’s Endowment Fund, even though the three officers were not the focus of the investigation.
The EC chairperson is said to have indicated that
she was not ready to work with any of her deputies as well as the Finance
Director.
Interestingly, Mrs.
Osei, together with her two deputies - Georgina Opoku Amankwaah and Alhaji
Amadu Sulley, in-charge of Operations - are being investigated by a five-member
committee set up by the Chief Justice, following petitions filed against them
on allegations of abuse of office and conflict of interest under Article 146 of
the 1992 Constitution.
Despite the damning allegations, the EC boss is
still at post.
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