Cocaine-Turn Sodium Saga: (ACP) Vincent Dedzo, Deputy Director-General Of CID Fingered

Embattled Gifty Tehoda, a former Deputy Commander of the Commercial Crime Unit (CCU) of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, has accused the Deputy Director-General of the CID, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Vincent Dedzo, of being the principal character behind the swapping of cocaine with sodium bicarbonate. She has also accused the Director of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), Mr. Yaw Donkor, of compromising his position during the investigations. In a six-page petition to President John Dramani Mahama over her alleged wrongful dismissal from the Ghana Police Service, Mrs Tehoda described her dismissal �as a grand scheme by the CID to use me as a pawn to cover up obvious wrongdoings within the set-up.� Mr. Dedzo declined comment on the allegation when contacted by the Daily Graphic and said he could not do so until he got a copy of the petition and permitted by his superiors to comment. The BNI, through its Director of Operations, Mr. Pius Awolenga, however said the matter was still under investigations and did not want to be drawn into a press war. He explained that the BNI could only submit its final report to the President but not to be responding to allegations in the media. In her September 25, 2012, petition, Mrs. Tehoda said: �Recently, I was served with a letter from a Central Disciplinary Board of the Police Service, purporting to dismiss me from the service pursuant to a purported review of a service enquiry.� Highlighting what the petition described as �further investigations and damning revelations�, the petitioner said when she was eventually released from cells of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), Mr. Awolenga, allegedly had a chat with her and told �me that because of the hype of the case in the media, it was possible that people might come to whisper into my ears about how the cocaine got swapped�. �He asked that in case I chanced upon any information, I should co-operate with them and make it available. Indeed, not quite long after my bail, some young men approached my pastor and indicated that they knew people in the cocaine underworld who had credible information on the missing cocaine,� the petition said. According to the petitioner, she did not hesitate to lead them to the BNI operatives, adding that in the course of time, they became informants. The petition said through the assistance of these informants, the BNI operatives got into contact with sources in the cocaine underworld who volunteered startling and damning revelations. The petitioner alleged that it was Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Vincent Dedzo, the current Deputy Director-General of the CID, who allegedly �stole the missing cocaine. At the time, that was the latter part of 2008, he was the Head of the Narcotic Unit of the CID�. After stealing the cocaine form a safe, whose key was in his exclusive possession, the petitioner alleged, he handed it over to a junior officer by name Mensah Cudjoe, who handed it over to a dealer by name Cantonna and it ended up in the market at a value of $19,000. �These were the startling revelations from the informants, one of whom claimed he has dealt in cocaine with ACP Vincent Dedzo since 2006,� the petition stated. The petition continued that armed with the foregoing intelligence, the operatives of the BNI mounted surveillance on Mensah Cudjoe and arrested him one evening in possession of two kilgrammes of cocaine. According to the petition, during interrogation, Cudjoe allegedly traded information on past activities with ACP Vincent Dedzo, adding that �he confessed to carrying cocaine for ACP Dedzo on three occasions, including the missing one�. �He confirmed that he indeed gave it to Cantonna. In respect of the two other occasions, he mentioned one Kwame Atta and one Adjei as recipients. It is pertinent to note that the four names which were floated by informants as people who usually dealt with ACP Vincent Dedzo in the cocaine business were all confirmed during the interrogation of ACP Dedzo�s alleged courier.� The petition said the stage was set for the arrest, interrogation and prosecution of the ACP Dedzo, but the Director of the BNI refused to proceed. �Besides by refusing to proceed against ACP Vincent Dedzo, he still has the leverage to orchestrate my removal from the Police Service by all kinds of the maneuvering with the top hierarchy of the service,� it said. �All the maneuvering by ACP Dedzo to have me removed from the Ghana Police Service was to serve one purpose: to use me as a pawn and portray me as the one responsible for the swapping of the cocaine exhibit so as to divert attention from him as the main culprit,� the petition said. �Sir, even though I am minded to go public with the information, I have on this issue in order to clear my name and restore some integrity to my profession, deferred to your high office, being hopeful that you will intervene for sanity to prevail in the security apparatus,� it stressed.