Contracts for Sale: SP slaps former PPA boss, brother-in-law with 18 counts of offences
The Office of the Special Prosecutor (SP) has charged the former Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), Adjenim Boateng Adjei, and his brother-in-law, Francis Kwaku Arhin, with 18 counts of offences for their various roles in “The Contracts for Sale” saga.
This was disclosed in a statement issued by the office of the SP on Wednesday, 18 May 2022.
The former PPA CEO has been charged with 8 counts of using public office for profit and 9 counts of “directly and indirectly influencing the procurement process to obtain an unfair advantage in the award of a procurement contract.”
The brother-in-law of the former CEO of the PPA has also been charged with “one count of using public office for profit.”
The 2, will on “Wednesday, 25 May 2022”, be arraigned before the High Court (Criminal Division), Accra.
Journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni was the first to unearth corrupt deals against the PPA boss in 2019 through a documentary, which compelled the President to refer the matter to CHRAJ for investigations.
In the exposé, a company allegedly owned by the PPA CEO, Talent Discovery Limited (TDL), was found to be getting many government contracts through restrictive tendering and selling those contracts to others for profit.
Among other things, the CHRAJ report said: “The evidence also established a pattern of movement of large volumes of cash through the Respondent’s bank accounts between March 2017 and August 2019, far in excess of his known income (Stanbic Bank: USD Account – $516,225.00; Cedi Account – ¢3.83 million; Euro Account – EU54,500; UMB Bank: $110,000). The Respondent could not offer a satisfactory explanation to the source of that huge volume of cash that passed through his bank account between March 2017 and August 2019 (unexplained wealth).
“The totality of the evidence showed that the Respondent had put himself in a position where his personal interest (financial and relational) conflicted with the performance of the functions of his office as CEO and Board Member of PPA.”
It noted that Mr Adjei “put himself in several positions where his personal, relational, and pecuniary interest in TDL and other companies actually conflicted with the performance of the functions of his office as CEO and Board Member of PPA. The Commission holds that the Respondent has contravened article 284 of the 1992 Constitution.”
“The Respondent, being the CEO of PPA, the Regulator of the procurement sector, the Commission is of the strong and considered view that he has gravely abused his high office of trust, and the appropriateness and proportionality of any action to be taken by the Commission must be commensurate with the gravity of the abuse.”
Source: classfmonline.com
