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Former head of the social security and Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Ernest Thompson will today appear before an Accra High court over the controversial $140 million OBS scandal.

Mr Thompson is expected to be charged for causing financial loss to the State.

He’ll appear in court with three others, including a former OBS project manager; John Hagan Mensah, Juliet Hasana Kramah of IT Company, Perfect Business System and former Head of IT Department, Caleb Kwaku Afaglo.

The four persons are believed to have colluded in the award of the contract which the government has described as a waste of resources.

Background

SSNIT settled for the $72 million OBS software to automate all the core processes in the administration of pension although it received tenders to undertake the project at much cheaper prices including $9 million.

SSNIT settled for the $72 million OBS software to automate all the core processes in the administration of pension although it received tenders to undertake the project at much cheaper prices including $9 million.

A document on the deal indicates that the eventual winner of the contract bid produced a tender price of $27,610,792 but that was reviewed to 34, 011,914.21 after the General Services Manager of SSNIT identified arithmetic errors in the tender of the eventual winner, Perfect Business Systems and Silverlake Consortium.
Perfect Business Systems and Silverlake Consortium was chosen out of the total of 10 companies and joint venture responded to the tender by the October 19, 2011 deadline.

Perfect Business System’s $34million was almost nine times the amount presented by Persol Systems, about $4million.

Sambus Company Limited presented the second least bid price of $9.8 million.

After the deal between SSNIT and Perfect Business Systems and Silverlake Consortium was sealed in 2012, the cost of the project increased by about $32million.

The increase was attributed to the procurement of additional equipment including servers and flash drivers and headsets.