An Accra High Court has ordered the prosecution in the trial of former Director-General of Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Ernest Thompson and others, to serve the accused persons with certain documents that would be used for the trial.
The court presided over by Justice Henry Anthony Kwofie, a Justice of the Court of Appeal sitting as an additional High Court judge, granted an application filed by Mr. Thompson demanding some 29 separate documents from the prosecution.
The prosecution has already disclosed a number of documents it intends to rely on for the trial as well as statements of witnesses, and the court had commenced case management to set down the modalities of the trial when Samuel Codjoe, counsel for the ex-SSNIT boss made the demands.
The prosecution had indicated those documents were not part of the documents they would be relying on during the trial but the accused person indicated he needed them.
Moving the motion, Mr. Codjoe said the application for the production of those documents was in accordance with Article 19 Clause 2 B and G of the 1992 Constitution and also falls in line with the practice direction on disclosures in criminal trials.
Richard Gymabiby, a Principal State Attorney who appeared for the prosecution said they were not opposed to the application, and the trial judge accordingly asked the prosecution to serve all the accused persons with the documents and not just Mr. Thompson.
Asked by the judge when the documents would be made available to the accused persons, Mr. Gyambiby told the court that they had began searching for those documents and as soon as they find them, they will be served on the accused persons.
The case was therefore, adjourned to December 2, 2021, for continuation of case management conference.
Main Trial
Mr. Thompson together with John Hagan Mensah, then Information Technology Infrastructure Manager of SSNIT; Caleb Kwaku Afaglo, then General Manager of Management Information Systems at SSNIT; Peter Hayibor, then General Counsel of SSNIT as well as Juliet Hassana Kramer are on trial before the court for allegedly willfully causing financial loss to the state.
The ex-SSNIT Boss Ernest Thompson, John Hagan Mensah, Juliet Hassana Kramer, and Caleb Afaglo have been charged with 18 counts of willfully causing financial loss of $14,803,299.5 to the state between September 2013 and April 2016.
The charge sheet indicated that Ernest Thompson, John Hagan Mensah, Juliet Hassana Kramer and Caleb Afaglo between December 2015 and April 2016 caused a financial loss of $5,465,909.14 to the state by causing payment to be made under “Change Order 7 for the purchase of IBM advanced hardware (2 Enterprise Class IBM Power8 E870, 2 Clustered V9000 flash systems, 1 V9000 system for disaster) recovery for Operational Business Suite project when same had already been paid under the Operational Business Suite Contract.”
Mr. Thompson, Mrs. Kramer and Peter Hayibor are also facing a charge of willfully causing a financial loss of $5,141,905.66 to the state by back-dating the warranty and Service Level Agreement of the Operational Business Suite project between January and September 2016.
Again, Ernest Thompson, John Hagan Mensah and Juliet Hassana Kramer have been accused of willfully causing financial loss of $2,292,048.23 to the state when they caused payment to be made “under Change Order 2 for the upgrade of hardware for the Operational Business Suite project when same had already been paid under the Operational Business Suite contract.
Perfect Business System
Juliet Hassana Kramer is also facing charges of having between October 2011 and May 2017 defrauding SSNIT of the sum of $66,783,148.08 under a contract to Perfect Business Systems (PBS) Limited, a non-existent company, and Silverlake Structured Services by representing that she was the Chief Executive Officer of PBS and Silverlake, authorised to sign on behalf of Silverlake, the tenderer of the OBS contract.
Mr. Thompson is also facing a charge of contravening the PPA Act by approving the sum of $9,536,652.50 for “Change Request for the Operational Business Suite Project, an amount which is above the threshold of the head of the entity.”
Forged Certificate
Caleb Afaglo is facing charges of possession and altering of forged Bachelor of Science in Computer Studies from Georgia Institute of Technology.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak