GII calls for ‘resurrection’ of double salaries, other cold corruption cases

The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) is calling for the resurrection of cold corruption cases that appear to be dying a natural death.

At a press conference in Accra, Tuesday, the anti-corruption institution cited eight corruption cases including the double salary allegations, the MMT scandal, the robbing the assemblies scandal, which they suspect have been abandoned by duty bearers.

Programmes Manager at GII Mary Awelana is, therefore, calling on the responsible agencies of state to provide updates on those cases.

“…We demand of government, particularly agencies of state-mandated to investigate and prosecute corruption the status of several alleged cases of corruption which inundated the airwaves during the course of the year but unfortunately we still do not know their outcomes.

She said to the extent that government began the process of investigation, it is duty-bound to inform Ghanaians about how far investigations have gone on both cases.

The call by GII comes at a time when several cases of alleged corruption under the erstwhile John Mahama administration and under the Akufo-Addo led administration appear to have gone under the radar with no information at all about the status of the investigation.

In August 2017 Joy News’ Manasseh Azuri-Awuni broke the robbing the assemblies scandal in which the erstwhile administration entered into suspicious contracts with companies belonging to the Jospong Group of companies to provide various sanitation services.

The companies allegedly were paid several millions of cedis but never delivered the services for which they were paid.

Manasseh cited the ¢98 million fumigation scandal in which 11 Jospong companies were sole-sourced to provide services to the state. He also reported the ¢320 million shady landfills management contract with Waste Landfills Company Limited, a subsidiary of the Jospong Group.

All those stories grabbed national attention with officials of Jospong invited for questioning.

There was also the issue of the double salary allegations in which the Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu, the second Deputy Speaker Alban Bagbin and scores of former NDC appointees were all accused of taking double salaries while in office for several months. They, however, denied the allegations against them

It was also a subject of great controversy in the country for a long period of time.

Then came the infamous Number 12 scandal which ended the promising career of the former president of the Ghana Football Association Kwesi Nyantakyi.

He had used the name of the president, the vice and other ministers as bait to receive favours, including monetary, from a businessman who, unknown to him, was Ghana’s ace undercover investigator, Anas Aremeyaw Anas on his sting operations.

Under the NPP there have been reports of premix scandal as well as the controversial sale of buses by the management of the Metro Mass Transit.

Those buses were said to have been hugely undervalued.

Despite the headline-grabbing attention, these stories assumed when they broke, nothing has come out of it.

The GII insists the institutions of state must provide information about how far they have gone with those cases.

 

source: Myjoyonline