5 Government CEOs likely to be jailed and why
Government CEOs likely to be jailed
Following the National Democratic Congress (NDC) empathic historic win in the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections, President-elect John Mahama is set to be sworn into office on January 7, 2025.
John Mahama promised Ghanaians an Operation Recover All Loots (ORAL), the initiative seeks to track down and retrieve all state assets looted under the Akufo-Addo Bawumia government to develop the country.
According to the Special Aide to Ghana’s President-elect, John Dramani Mahama, Joyce Bawa Mogtari, young people are interested in ORAL and want to see prosecution.
Today, we examine five government Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) likely to be jailed after a change of government next year.
Dr. Ammishaddai Adu Owusu-Amoah, former Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA)
The “SML Scandal”, an exposé by The Fourth Estate, titled, ‘The GH¢ 3 Billion Lie’, fingered the Ministry of Finance for awarding a $100 million contract to SML to monitor Upstream Petroleum Production and to Audit the value chain of Minerals and Metals Resources.
SML has stated that its upstream operations have not commenced and pointed out that the $100 million per year payment allegation is entirely false.
According to Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Rev. Dr. Ammishaddai Adu Owusu-Amoah, and his entire nuclear family have run away from Ghana over the $100 million SML corruption scandal.
The former GRA boss allegedly signed the $100 million SML contract, run from Ghana hours before President Akufo-Addo called for an investigation into the SML scandal.
Adjenim Boateng Adjei, former Chief Executive Officer of the Public Procurement Authority
The “Contracts for Sale” scandal saw the dismissal of the Chief Executive Officer of the Public Procurement Authority, Adjenim Boateng Adjei.
Huge sums of “unexplained” money were found to have been deposited into the former PPA CEO’s bank accounts while he was in office.
He was charged by the Special Prosecutor with corruption offenses in the ‘Contracts for Sale’ scandal eight counts of using public office for profit and nine counts of directly and indirectly influencing the procurement process to obtain an unfair advantage in awarding a procurement contract.
It has been reported that the former PPA boss had withdrawn all the money from his bank accounts that were frozen when investigations into his activities began, he cleared his accounts of all the funds before Kissi Agyebeng took office.
Gyankroma Akufo-Addo, Director of Creative Arts Council
In the “Ambulance Scandal”, member of parliament Sam Okudzeto on July 21, 2024, provided evidence of alleged financial mismanagement in the payment of over $34.9 million authorized by former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta for the purchase and fitting of spare parts for 307 government ambulances.
The approved payment, amounting to $113,695.46 per ambulance, exceeded the cost of many fully equipped new ambulances, raising concerns.
President Akufo-Addo’s daughter Gyankroma Akufo-Addo has been fingered in the scandal, with her direct ties with Service Ghana Auto Group Limited securing a single-source contract under questionable circumstances.
According to reports she and her associates received $58million to purchase about 307 ambulances and an additional $34.9 million to procure spare parts.
Service Ghana Auto Group Limited has denied the allegations that the $34.9 million payment was higher than the cost of acquiring new ambulances.
Gifty Oware-Mensah, the deputy executive of the National Service Scheme
The NSS scandal reports suggest that the NSS database has been inflated with 40,000 names. It is reported that 40,000 ghost names are said to be working in state institutions, paid an allowance of GHS 715 a month, and allegedly perpetuated for some 36 months.
The leaked information on social media also alleged that Gifty Oware-Aboagye oversaw the payment of these allowances into the accounts of the 40,000 ghost service personnel.
More revelation reveals that the allowances for these 40,000 ghost names were disbursed without delay to the accounts of their while, actual NSS personnel who have been working hard for months had their allowances delayed for months.
Gifty Oware-Mensah has been accused of wearing Richard Mil’s 350,000-dollar wristwatches because every month the NSS makes a whopping 27.5 million Ghana cedis from the 40,000 ghost names.
Paul Opoku-Mensah National Cathedral Project CEO
In the “National Cathedral scandal”, Malik Basintale the National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) leaked a pay slip of the National Cathedral project Overseer Dr Paul Opoku-Mensah and some board of trustees.
Mr. Basintale, in an interview on TV3’s New Day show, stated that the National Cathedral project was suspended in 2022 and the project overseer, Dr Paul Opoku-Mensah, and some board of trustees stated that they were not being paid for their work done which he described as a bare face lie.
He revealed that they were being paid GHC21,000 every month despite the halt of the construction works on the project.
Basintale statement on X also dared Dr. Paul Opoku-Mensah to sue him if the pay slips were fake.
“The sad part is that the NPP “Zombies” writing fake fake will not be those to account, so they are free. Dr. Paul Opoku-Mensah himself will be the one crying”. Basintale added.
Meanwhile, Nigeria under former President Muhammadu Buhari, recovered over $1.2 billion in stolen assets.
Ghanaians are hoping John Mahama can emulate this with their Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) to recover some looted state money and prosecute and jail corrupt government officials if found to have committed an offense against Ghana.
