Ernest Thompson And 4 Others Charged With Causing Financial Loss
Former SSNIT boss, Ernest Thompson and four others have been dragged to court for causing financial loss to the state in the controversial SSNIT Operational Suite (OBS).
The four others are John Hagan Mensah, a former IT infrastructure manager at SSNIT, Juliet Hassana Kramer, CEO of Perfect Business Systems, Caleb Kwaku Afaglo, former head of Management Information System (MIS) at SSNIT and Peter Hayibor, a lawyer for SSNIT.
The five individuals have been slapped with a total of 29 charges ranging from willfully causing financial loss to the state, conspiracy to cause financial loss to the state, defrauding by false pretense and contravention of public procurement authority act and authoring of forged documents.
Thompson, Hagan and Ms Kramer have been charged with willfully causing financial loss of more than US$24million to the state, while Afaglo has been accused of gaining employment at SSNIT with fake certificates.
Hayibor, the lawyer, is alleged to have known the alleged illegal transactions concerning the OBS at SSNIT.
Not guilty
At the hearing of the case on Tuesday, July 24, 2018, all the five accused persons pleaded not guilty and were granted self-recognizance bail by the court, presided over by Mr Justice Henry Kwofi.
Hearing of the case continues on October 17, 2018
Facts
The facts as read by the Attorney- General (A-G), Ms Gloria Afua Akuffo, indicated that in 2010, SSNIT embarked on the implementation of the OBS to provide state of the art pension administration.
The contract sum, she explained was around US$34m.
She said SSNIT advertised for bids for the project but awarded it to a consortium which included PBS, although PBS did not partake in the bidding
Thompson, Juliet and Afaglo, the Attorney General said, caused SSNIT to pay additional money for items which were already covered by the contract.
As a result, she said the project ballooned to around $66million. She also explained that Thompson made payment which were above his threshold as Director - General of SSNIT. The AG further said Afaglo used fake certificates to gain employment at SSNIT.
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