Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie
A Deputy Director General at the National Communications (NCA), Dr. Isaac Yaw Ani, has been accused of not being truthful in his testimony at an Accra High Court hearing the case of the immediate Board Chairman of NCA, Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie and four others accused of willfully causing financial loss to the state.
Dr. Ani who is the second prosecution witness in the trial had told the court that the first time he heard about the purported Cyber Security system was when the then Director General of NCA, William Mathew Tetteh Tevie, approached him in February 2016 telling him to prepare a transfer letter for the release of $4 million to a private company, Infraloks Development Limited (IDL).
“When I got to the office, the board chairman, Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie was with the Director General and the board chairman said that there is an urgent need by the national security to procure cyber security equipment and therefore we should support the national security with $4 million”, Dr. Ani told the court led in his evidence-in-chief by Director of Public Prosecutions, Yvonne Attakora Obuobisa.
But private legal practitioner, Thaddeus Sory, who is the lead counsel for Mr. Baffoe-Bonnie has put it to the witness that he was not being faithful to the court when he said he only got to know about the request from the National Security Council Secretariat for the purchase of the system somewhere in February 2016.
Presenting minutes of the 33rd and the 34th meeting of the finance committee of the NCA board, the lawyer put it to the witness that he was part of the committee which sat on the matter back in June 2015 hence he was privy to the discussions way before February 2016.
The witness conceded that he was part of those committee meetings which discussed the issues but said he was not being untruthful as he meant the first time he got to know about the system in 2016 was in February.
At the previous proceeding, Mr. Sory had asked the witness whether he knows McKush Consultancy Services and LTI and whether McKush Consultancy Services had had any working relationships with Infraloks Development Limited.
Dr. Ani stated that he knows McKush Consultancy Services because it is a consultancy company he established but it has no working relationship with IDL.
But at yesterday’s sitting, the lawyer gave the witness a document to identify whether it is a letter from McKush Consultancy Limited to IDL asking it to transfer an amount of $2 million.
The witness confirmed that the letter was from his firm to IDL. It is, however, not yet clear what the money was about.
There were a few exchanges between the lawyer and the witness regarding his signature as documents he had signed had some differences in his signature.
But the witness told the court that his signatures on bank cheques are different from those on other documents for fear of his signature being cloned by others.
Trial
The immediate past Board Chairman of the NCA, Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie, together with William Mathew Tetteh Tevie, former Director General of the NCA; Nana Owusu Ensaw, a former chairman of finance sub-committee of the NCA; Alhaji Salifu Mimina Osman, a former National Security Coordinator on the NCA Board as well as a private businessman, George Derek Oppong, Director of Infraloks Development Limited (IDL), have been accused of conspiring to, and successfully causing financial loss to the state.
They are being charged for allegedly creating, looting and sharing a staggering $4 million among themselves under the guise of procuring a Cyber Surveillance System which they claimed was to be used for anti-terrorism activities in the country.
It has already been established that the purchase of the equipment was not budgeted for by the NCA and there was no existing contract between the NCA and IDL, or a board approval for the supply of any cyber surveillance system.
The court presided over by Justice Eric Kyei Barfour adjourned the matter to October 23, 2018 for further cross-examination of the witness.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak