Ernest Thompson
An Accra High Court has given the Attorney General’s Office two weeks to file additional documents requested in the trial of former Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Ernest Thompson and four other persons, who have been charged with causing financial loss to the state.
Samuel Codjoe, lawyer of the former SSNIT boss, said documents were crucial to their case.
The documents, according to the lawyer, include the first 111 pages of the controversial Operating Business Suites (OBS) contract.
The court in December last year directed the AG to file the documents on the request of the lawyer.
The AG has so far file 127 documents and pen drives with additional information which it intends to rely on for the trial.
Although the contents of the documents are not known, Yvonne Attakora Obuobisa, Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), told an Accra High Court hearing the matter that the state had filed all the documents that it would rely on for the trial.
Appearing before the court yesterday, the DPP told the court that SSNIT has furnished the AG with some of the documents.
Yvonne Attakora Obuobisa assured the court that the documents would be ready in two weeks’ time
She, therefore, prayed the court to give the prosecution two weeks to get all the documents from SSNIT.
The court, presided over by Justice Henry Anthony Kwofie, a Court of Appeal judge sitting as an additional High Court Judge, subsequently adjourned the matter to February 13, 2019.
Mr. Thompson and three former management members of SSNIT and a private businesswoman have been accused of causing financial loss to the state in the award of the controversial and failed $72 million IT project – Operational Business Suite (OBS).
The other accused persons are John Hagan Mensah, Information Technology Infrastructure Manager of SSNIT, Juliet Hassana Krama, CEO of Perfect Business Solutions (PBS) Limited, the operator of the OBS, Caleb Kwaku Afaglo, General Manager of Management Information Systems at SSNIT and Peter Hayibor, General Counsel of SSNIT.
They have been accused of inflating the contract sum of the OBS from $34,011,914.21 to $66,783,148.08 through what are termed variously as ‘change orders’ and ‘variations.’
The five accused persons are facing a total of 29 charges, including conspiracy to commit crime, causing financial loss to the state, defrauding by false pretenses, contravention of the Public Procurement Authority Act, as well as possession and authoring of forged documents.
By Gibril Abdul Razak