By William
Yaw Owusu
Wednesday
September 19, 2018
A former Managing Director of the Bulk Oil Storage
and Transportation Company (BOST) Limited under the previous Mahama
administration, Kingsley Kwame Awuah-Darko, has refuted claims that he is being
‘pursued’ by the Economic and Organised Crime Organization (EOCO).
He denied reports that a warrant had been issued for
his arrest.
“EOCO is not and cannot be chasing me since they
know of my whereabouts,” he said, in a statement yesterday, insisting “so the
story that EOCO is chasing me is palpably false…”
He also debunked claims that he supervised the
illegal transfer of huge sums into an account held by the Chief of Staff (CoS)
under the Mahama presidency.
CNA
Petition
Last week, a pressure group, Centre for National
Affairs (CNA), petitioned the Office of the Special Prosecutor to initiate
criminal investigations into what it claimed to be suspected illegal payments
from BOST to the previous Mahama administration.
They claimed the recipient’s account was Chief of
Staff’s Sundries Account No. 1, with account number 1018631473188 at the Bank
of Ghana (BoG), and the alleged illegal transfers were done from August 2015
until early January 2017 when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) handed
over to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after the December 7, 2016, general
elections.
In the statement, Mr Awuah-Darko said “the issue of
transfers to the CoS is not illegal as is being suggested…In fact if one wants
to steal money, why would one transfer the money to a statutory account held by
the Chief of Staff, which can be audited at any point in time?”
Contacts
EOCO
Narrating how EOCO got in touch with him, Mr.
Awuah-Darko said “on receipt of their letter, I called the office and spoke to
the DG’s assistant. I followed our conversation up with a letter which I copied
my lawyers on. In my response to EOCO, I gave them my telephone number and my
email on which I could be reached. EOCO has not responded to my letter either
by email or by phone to date.”
He said “they dropped off a letter in my house
somewhere towards the end of March and early May, which was sent to me by my
office in Accra. This account is not a fake account, neither is the Chief of
Staff of the President of the Republic of Ghana a fake position.”
He said, “BOST, as you are aware, is in charge of
fuel security in the country. BOST, by virtue of this mandate, took up the task
of supplying fuel to Armed Forces and the Presidency at the request of the CDS
(Admiral Quarshie) and the CoS because the Goods & Services Budget
allocated to them by MoFEP was inadequate to keep them operational.”
Smooth
Sailing Situation
Mr. Awuah-Darko explained ‘needless to say our
hitherto smooth sailing situation with GOIL ran into serious reconciliation
issues as a result of the confusion around which fuel we supplied went to the
security services and which went to GOIL.”
“After BOST made a number of regular monthly
supplies, probably in the region of 6 or 7 months, our attention was drawn to
the fact that we were not an OMC and as such we could not supply the military
directly and so we commenced the supply via Go Energy and GOIL whom we were
also supplying through the Strategic Reserve Petroleum Programme I had
instituted at BOST,” he said.
Fuel
Security
He said “it was at this point that a decision was
made that in order to avoid the reconciliation issues and not put the entire
fuel security programme at risk we come up with a solution that keeps the
Military and the Presidency’s fuel operations running.”
Board
Approach
Mr. Awuah-Darko said “in this respect, I went to my
Board and got approval that internally BOST funds this by putting 5 pesewas on
top of all our sales out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Programme to fund
fueling the Presidency and selected security services.”
“Presidential request and approval via the Chief of
Staff’s Office, Ministerial approval via the Ministry of Petroleum were
captured in a memo and sent to the BOST Board, which also duly approved the
transaction,” adding “please note that approvals were granted at all levels to
protect the legitimacy of the transaction.”
He said “EOCO knows this because they have
investigated the matter…In actual fact about three weeks ago my Board Chairman
Kakra Essamuah was invited by EOCO on this same issue, he provided the C’ssion
with all the relevant information in addition to confirming verbally to them
all the above.”
No
Security Fees
However, Bulk Oil Distributors have denied claims
that it paid GH¢40.5m in ‘security fees’ after revelations that they ended up
‘illegally’ in the Office of the Chief of Staff’s account.
Senyo Hosi, who is Chief Executive of the Chamber of
Bulk Oil Distributors, said on Joy FM
that ‘there is nothing like security fees in their invoices.”
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