Arafat Suleman Abdulai
THE ECONOMIC and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) has commenced investigations into allegations of financial impropriety levelled against the Zongo Development Fund (ZoDF) secretariat by a whistleblower.
The whistleblower has furnished the anti-graft agency with details of accounting breaches spanning many months.
EOCO is particularly interested in procurement anomalies and the inflation of cost of projects such as astro turfs and unusual payment for contracts under the watch of the management.
Sources have revealed that the Acting Chief Executive Officer, Arafat Suleman Abdulai, is allegedly being investigated particularly for causing financial loss to the state.
EOCO is reported to have demanded documents covering certain transactions shrouded in financial improprieties and which are not in conformity with laid down procedures.
DAILY GUIDE sources have revealed that a female procurement officer is one of the officers being questioned about some transactions allegedly authorised by the CEO.
The said procurement officer and an accountant at the secretariat are also assisting in the ongoing probe, which is said to have ruffled the CEO.
A COVID-19 sensitisation programme reportedly gulped about GH¢50,000 in per diem, some beneficiaries of which are not on the payroll of the Zongo Development Fund, this paper has discovered.
Further checks by this paper unmasked an internal auditor as critical in the investigations as well as some contractors and engineers.
Some public officers on secondment from other state institutions, one of them an engineer, have returned to their mother places of work because of the unusual developments at ZoDF.
This paper also gathered that auditors ‘who would not play ball’ are hounded out of the place.
When DAILY GUIDE contacted Musah Yahya Jafaru, Public Relations Officer of the fund, through a mobile phone call, he said he did not know anything about the said investigations.
The ZoDF was established in fulfillment of President Akufo-Addo’s promise to set up a body to bring development to the doorsteps of the Zongo communities across the country.
The ZoDF operated under the umbrella of the Ministry of Zongo and Inner City Development, now defunct.
The Office of Inner City Development and Zongo Affairs, under the Presidency, has now replaced the ministry.
BY Linda Tenyah-Ayettey