Features
ECG ‘meter-fraud’: Govt must act quickly!!!
Wikipidia defines ‘fraud’ as wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.
The synonyms for ‘fraud’ include, swindling, scam, hanky-panky, shenanigans, crookedness, embezzlement, deceit, monkey-business and rip-off.
The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) is said to have forwarded a case docket involving an alleged $36 million procurement fraud of electric meters, to the office of the Attorney-General for prosecution.
The $36 million procurement fraud is reported to have taken place in the Republic of Ghana in 2016.
The submission of the case docket to the office of the Attorney-General follows the conclusion of over four good years of investigations into ‘the fraudulent matter’ by the EOCO and the National Security.
Many concerned Ghanaians and institutions have questioned the long delay in the investigations and prosecution of officials involved in the ‘procurement fraud’.
The fraud was alleged to have ‘germinated’ in September 2016 when L&R Investments and Trading Company, which is incorporated in China, entered into a contract with the Government of Ghana, to supply electric meters to the Electricity Company of Ghana. Reportedly, the contract was to be executed within a period of 26 weeks, and an advanced payment of $12 million was made to L&R Investments plus a Letter of Credit for $24 million.
The 2020 Auditor-General’s Report on state-owned institutions, however, revealed that the meters, which were procured at a huge cost to the state, were abandoned by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) because they were not manufactured to meet the required specifications.
A brief background of the fraudulent deal dates back to September 2016, when the then Ministry of Power wrote to the Managing Director of the ECG , alerting him of a-$40-million financing, secured by the Government of Ghana for the procurement of electric meters.
Reportedly, the letter named Messrs L&R Investments, whose local representatives are Messrs First Grace Limited, to be given the contract to supply the meters.
The ECG management, upon the receipt of the letter from the Ministry of Power engaged Messrs L&R Investments and their local Ghanaian representatives. After ECG had evaluated the proposals from L&R Investments, a pre-contract meeting was said to have been held in October 2016 between the technical team of ECG and the Managing Director of L&R Investments Company. Reportedly, at that meeting, the scope of supply; technical classifications; due diligence; pilot studies; factory acceptance tests and training of ECG metering staff were agreed upon.
Indeed, the two key conditions before the supply of the meters after signing the contract were; the pilot studies to assess the meters for two months and the factory acceptance tests. Sources, however, say :”The 200 electric meters that were to be provided as samples for the pilot studies were not taken to the ECG and the agreed travel of three representatives from ECG to undertake the factory acceptance tests in China before manufacturing of the said meters , did not take place.”
The Executive Director of the Institute for Energy Policies and Research (INSTEPR), Mr Kwadwo Poku, insists that; “without any of these conditions being met, the management of ECG was sent shipping documents for containers of meters at the Tema Port.” Expectedly, the ECG management notified L&R Investments that they could not accept the meters because the processes agreed upon per the contract had not been followed.
Disturbingly, the meters in the containers were not the specifications as per the supply contract, when the containers were cleared at the Tema Port. According to the Executive Director of INSTEPR, the contract was terminated in 2017 after legal consultations but strangely, the company was able to discount the $24 million Letters of Credit given to them under the contract. “We have sighted documents that state that on the 16th of August 2017, at a time when Capital Bank had ceased to be a bank under the laws of Ghana; Capital Bank discounted the Letters of Credit and made a payment of $22.5 million to L&R Investments”, the Executive Director of INSTEPR, has said.
For instance, Mr. Kwadwo Poku is asking the following relevant questions: “Why has it taken four years for the state security agencies in investigating this transaction? “Who are the people behind L&R Investments and Trading Company in Ghana? “The initial $12 million was paid to First Grace Limited, their local representatives in Ghana.
Who are the people behind the Ghanaian company? “Why is the management of Capital Bank not being prosecuted for the illegal discounting of the Letters of Credit?” Readers, the initial investigation into the fraudulent electric meter-deal was reportedly carried out by Kroll and Associates; a corporate investigations and risk consulting firm contracted by the government to investigate various transactions under former President Mahama’s administration.
Readers, remember? How Mr Yao Domelovo, the immediate past Auditor-General was angered by the audits of Kroll and Associates, sanctioned by the then Senior Minister, Mr Yaw Osafo Maafo ? The $36 million fraudulent deal was among other deals uncovered by Kroll and Associates.
A lot of well-meaning Ghanaians, however, hold the view that our government has been ‘very slow’ in taking action about this very disturbing fraudulent act. And this column challenges the government to quickly do the needful!!! Contact email/ WhatsApp of author: asmahfrankg@gmail.com (0505556179)
By G. Frank Asmah
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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