Kwame Preprah and Dr Sipa Yankey
The Forum for Public Accountability (FoPA) has described as untoward the appointment of persons it considers as ex-convicts whose acts of commission caused financial loss to the state.
The FPA said during a press conference in Accra yesterday that President Atta Mills, since assuming office, had appointed to very key positions persons who had been convicted by courts of competent jurisdiction of various offences of dishonesty and “and have been held guilty of having caused financial loss to the state”.
It particularly pointed at Dr George Sipa Yankey, Ibrahim Adam, Kwame Peprah and Daniel Abodakpi as persons the president had appointed to key positions even after their financial misdemeanor.
The pressure group observed that Dr Sipa Yankey, as a director at the Finance Ministry, had a role to play in the financing of the ill-fated Quality Grain project in Avayime in the Volta Region.
In what came to be dubbed the ‘Quality Grain’ case, George Yankey succeeded in engineering the loss of over $20million of the hard-earned funds of the state.
According to FoPA, a court deplored the role of George Sipa Yankey in acting as a facilitator to the commission of a financial crime against the state by a citizen of the United States of America, Ms. Cotton.
But for the negligence of George Sipa Yankey, the group said, “Ms. Cotton would not have succeeded in siphoning twenty million United States Dollars of Ghana’s money”.
President Mills, regardless of the foregone, the group pointed out, appointed Mr. Yankey as Minister of Health, a ministry with one of the highest budgets in the country.
It was fateful, the group noted, that a British court finally nailed some personalities including Mr. Yankey in a case of malfeasance, which eventually led to the president asking the man to resign in a fashion it described as a gimmick on the part of President Mills.
Ibrahim Adam, who was implicated in the Quality Grain saga, the group observed, was appointed to the high office of the chairmanship of the board of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), regardless of his criminal record.
The group pointed out that such appointment in a critical establishment which is responsible for the granting of credit facilities to farmers and others, among other tasks, contradicted the president’s claim of having the interest of the Ghanaian worker and farmer at heart.
Turning to Kwame Peprah, one-time Finance Minister, the group said the president appointed him chairman of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) even though he superintended the massive loss of state funds in the infamous Quality Grain saga, for which he and the others were convicted and jailed.
Daniel Abodakpi’s appointment as Ghana’s High Commissioner to Malaysia, the group stated, was a clear testament of President Mills’ disregard for issues relating to financial crime, corruption and others, given the man’s role in causing financial loss to the state through the court computerization project.
The grant of a presidential pardon for the foregone personalities by former President John Kufuor notwithstanding, the group pointed out, “it is necessary to state that the mere granting of a presidential pardon to the gentlemen does not morally justify the assignment of the eminent positions stated above”.
The group added that the granting of a pardon was to relieve convicts from the devastating result of their conviction, adding that the politics of Ghana should reflect the morality of the people.
FoPA charged President Mills to demonstrate that his commitment to fighting corruption was not a mere rhetoric.
“He must give practical meaning to it by not appointing men convicted of financial crimes against the state to various public offices,” FoPA stressed.
A Daily Guide Report