Adjenim Boateng Adjei
It is emerging that bank accounts of the dismissed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA),), Adjenim Boateng Adjei who was allegedly caught for selling government’s contracts have been emptied.
The frozen bank accounts were emptied within a shortest possible time allegedly on the blind side of the authorities.
Mr. Adjenim Adjei was said to have reportedly withdrawn all the money from his bank accounts with no traces.
According the local media outlet, Fourth Estate sources, the former PPA boss cleared his accounts of all the funds before the current Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, took office although the matter also centered on how Mr Adjei was able to give clues to huge sum of “unexplained” money deposited into his bank accounts while he was in office.
Barely three years Mr. Adjei was in office, more than GHc41 million was paid in cash into his local and foreign currencies accounts.
An investigative documentary carried out by Manasseh Azure Awuni dubbed “Contracts for Sale revealed that Mr. Adjei formed a company, Talent Discovery Limited, with his brother-in-law after his appointment as the CEO of the PPA.
The company won a number of government contracts through the restrictive tendering method after contracts were approved by the PPA board of which Mr. Adjei was a member.
According to the investigation, because Talent Discovery Limited did not have the capacity to execute the contracts, it then sold the contracts to individuals and companies without the knowledge or approval of the awarding entities.
President Akufo-Addo then suspended AB Adjei and referred him to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) to investigate his conduct.
There was a subsequent petition from the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), Ghana’s chapter of Transparency International for CHRAJ to probe Mr. Adjei and the board of the PPA for their role in the scandal.
Sometime in 2020, CHRAJ released its investigative report on the president’s petition. It found Mr Adjei guilty of conflict of interest and other offences.
CHRAJ then banned Mr Adjei from holding public office for 10 years which was appealed at the high court by Mr. Adjei but lost.
CHRAJ also revealed that the total amount in Mr. Adjei’s accounts since he assumed office in 2017 stood at GHc14.8 million saying that “We find the Respondent’s explanation completely unsatisfactory and that he could not explain the source of the large volumes of excess wealth that passed through his bank accounts between March 2017 and August 2019 (unexplained wealth).”
Both CHRAJ and the Special Proscutor at the time said prior to assuming office, the amounts deposited into Mr Adjei’s accounts were insignificant when compared with what went into his account during his time in office.
Information gathered from sources, according to the Fourth Estate indicates all the monies in the accounts have vanished.
This was able to happened because, per the report the freezing order expired and Mr. Adjei applied to the court to have it lifted since the OSP could not have kept the account frozen for more than 12 months without acting on the reason for which the account was frozen.
He then proceeded to clear all the funds in the various accounts he held.
Though other state agencies such as the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) could have frozen the accounts when the OSP’s order had expired but failed to do so.
By Vincent Kubi