President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has ordered the release of former opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP and ex-Minister, Abuga Pele, who was jailed for six years in 2018 for abetment and causing financial loss to the state over the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) rot.
Abuga Pele, who was the NDC MP for Chiana Paga in the Upper East Region and doubled as the National Coordinator for National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) which metamorphosed into GYEEDA under President Mills and is now called National Youth Authority (NYA), was granted presidential pardon on grounds of ill-health.
Abuga Pele has been serving his term in the Nsawam Medium Security Prison until he reportedly became very ill last month and has been at the hospital ever since.
He was said to have been transferred from the infirmary in Nsawam to the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, also known as Ridge when his condition deteriorated and was at the High Dependency Unit (HDU) of the hospital.
Final Verdict
After about four years of trial, Abuga Pele, as GYEEDA boss and a private businessman, Philip Apkeena Asibit, was sentenced to a total of 18 years imprisonment in hard labour by an Accra High Court in February 2018 for defrauding by false pretenses and willfully causing financial loss to the state.
The two were found guilty of 19 counts, including six counts of defrauding by false pretenses, two counts of abetment of crime, five counts of dishonestly causing loss to public property and five counts of willfully causing financial loss to the state by the court presided over by Justice Afia Serwaa Asare Botwe.
They were first arraigned before the court in January 2014 and had pleaded not guilty to all the charges but the prosecution was able to adduce evidence to secure the conviction of the two and was accordingly sentenced.
Jail Terms
Abuga Pele was sentenced to six years imprisonment for abetment of crime and another four years for causing financial loss to the state, both to run concurrently, meaning he is supposed to serve a six-year jail term in hard labour.
Asibit on the other hand was given a 12-year jail term for defrauding by false pretenses and three years for dishonestly causing loss to public property, both to run concurrently.
The court had also ordered the state to recover any assets of Asibit equivalent to the sum of $1,948,626.65 which he fraudulently received from the state.
Case Profile
The Attorney General’s Department was able to prove that Asibit did not undertake any consultancy work for GYEEDA or secure any World Bank funding to warrant the equivalent of $1,948,626.65 that he was paid on the orders of Abuga Pele.
Abuga Pele on his part was found to have abetted Asibit in defrauding the state when he presented a memo that warranted the payment of the said amount as well as causing financial loss to the state as a public officer.
The prosecution had called seven witnesses while the convicts also called a number of defense witnesses after the court dismissed their respective submissions of no case applications.
Judgment Day
The court had pronounced that Asibit who was the CEO of Goodwill International Group (GIG), availed himself as a representative of then state-owned MDPI and went ahead to present letters using the letterhead of MDPI at the blind side of the Director-General of the company as well as some staff of the company, and when he was caught he claimed that his company and MDPI interchangeably used letterheads.
The court had said that although Asibit continuously insisted that the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) seized his documents that he could have used to defend himself, at no point during the trial did he make any application to the court to order the state to release the so-called documents and could as well not provide any reasonable explanations to the use of MDPI letterhead to demand payment of services he never rendered the state but took huge sums.
The court also held that Asibit claimed that he had offered consultancy services to the NYEP through workshops but could not provide any evidence to that effect, and also added that he made a false claim that he had secured $65 million World Bank’s funding for the NYEP and also recruited 250 youth for the facilitation of the NYEP programmes.
On Abuga Pele, the court held that the memo he, as GYEEDA boss, presented to the then Minister of Youth and Sports which warranted the payment of the huge sums to Asibit was full of inaccuracies meant to move the hand of the minister to grant the money to Asibit.
By Ernest Kofi Adu