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General News of Monday, January 21, 2019
Source: clbadfmonline.com
2019-01-21
Dr. Stephen Opuni, former CEO of COCOBOD
Some letters and documents essential to the ongoing trial of Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni, former CEO of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), and businessman Seidu Agongo, missing in the US Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG), have still not been found, according to the deputy director of legal affairs at COCOBOD, Johannes Velba.
On December 17, 2018, the court ordered CRIG's management to provide him with the documents after Mr. Agongo's lawyer, Mr. Benson Nutsukpui, declared at the hearing that CRIG had not received any information. not fully respected an earlier order to this effect.
At this hearing, Mr. Nutsukpui drew the court's attention to the omission of some essential attachments, including an invoice, in a letter of November 20, 2014. He also mentioned a report from evaluation of Codapec / Hitec products submitted to COCOBOD in accordance with CRIG CRG27 / 118. / 4643 of 31 August 2016, which was attached to the report on agrochemical testing.
He also cited a report on the badysis of two samples of granular fertilizers contained in a rice bag submitted to the CEO on October 24, 2016 in a letter bearing reference number CRG39 / 14Vol22 / 5577 and a update on efforts to locate another letter dated 21 October. 2014.
Mr Velba explained at the time that the efforts made to find this letter had so far been unsuccessful, adding that the available evidence suggests that there is a poor ranking or a lack of evidence. falsification of records.
He also stated that some of the files in which the files had been lost had been renumbered or had been deleted. He then told the court that the CRIG had set up a committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the non-availability of this letter.
However, at the resumption of his work on Monday, January 21, 2019, Mr. Velba told the court that, even if the committee set up by the CRIG to examine possible alterations has not yet completed its work no success was recorded in the search for missing documents. .
Mr. Velba added that they also had not been able to unravel the circumstances that led to the disappearance of the documents. He told the court, however, that the committee would submit a full report in about 14 days, during which time they would have investigated.
Mr. Agongo, who held most of the shares of the now defunct Bank Heritage, whose license had recently been revoked by the Bank of Ghana in the COCOBOD case, allegedly, together with Mr. Opuni, fraudulently contracts of a total amount equivalent to GHS271. million to supply COCOBOD with fertilizer.
In March 2018, the Attorney General accused both people of 27 counts of deliberately causing financial losses to the state.
The AG argues that Dr. Opuni, during his tenure as CEO of COCOBOD (from November 2013 to January 2017), breached the procedures set out in the public procurement laws and other laws that led the state. to lose 271 million Swedish kroner in the so-called fertilizer scandal. and the distribution of substandard fertilizer to cocoa farmers.
The two accused denied any wrongdoing, pleaded not guilty to the 27 counts and were awarded bail of 300,000 GHS by the court.
In announcing the revocation of the Heritage Bank's license on Friday, January 4, 2019, the governor of the central bank, Dr. Ernest Addison, told reporters – when he was asked about it he did not consider the 39 action as premature because the COCOBOD case was still in court – that:
"As for the heritage bank, I wanted to enter the law with you, I do not know if I should, but we do not need the court's decision to make the decisions we've made. We need to secure sources of capital to authorize a bank; if we have doubts, if we think it is suspicious, it is on this basis that we find that it is not acceptable as capital. We do not need the court to decide whether a person is "fit and fit", the mere fact of being involved in a case involving criminal proceedings makes you unfit. "
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