Fraud at Tema Assembly …Five blow over ¢2.8bn
By: Richard Attenkah, Tema
The management of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) is investigating circumstances leading to the embezzlement of over GH¢288,000 (2.88 billion old cedis) belonging to the Assembly, The Chronicle can reveal.
So far, the names of five persons have come up in connection with the embezzlement, and they are Salassie Adih, Works Department Accountant and also responsible for final accounts/trial balance at the TMA headquarters (believed to the head of the syndicate), and Samuel Wuni, Accountant at the Tema East Sub-Metro District Council, Tema New Town.
The rest are Margaret Mensah, Cashier at the Community One (1) Market Revenue office, Daniel Ampiah, Revenue Accountant, TMA head office, and Mrs. Janet Aboagye Okyere, Cashier at the Works Department.
The financial scandal was uncovered through an audit aimed at reviewing the internal control mechanism for collection and accounting for all revenues collected at the Works Department of the TMA, which was carried out by the management of the assembly.
Present at the audit meeting, which took place about two weeks ago, were Robert Kempes Ofosuware, TMA Chief Executive, Charles Neequaye Kotey, Metro Coordinating Director, Josephine Naa Torshie, Metro Finance Officer, Kpibitey Odonkor, Ag. Metro Engineer, Charles Ofori of the Works Department, and the five suspects.
The audit revealed some anomalies in the operational procedures of the assembly's revenue generating activities, leading to impropriety and illegalities on the part of cashiers and some staff suspected to belong to a syndicate operating at the assembly, thus causing huge financial loss to the TMA.
The modus operandi of the syndicate, according to the paper's investigation, is that the group uses duplicates of General Counterfoil Receipts (GCRs) with serial numbers as those bought from the Controller and Accountant General's Department, and cancelled receipts and single payments to issue two or more building permits to private developers.
'Something we discovered, for example, was that they wrote GH¢10,689 on the receipt, but beneath the duplicate, they wrote GH¢25 for the Assembly. They will then take the cheque to the TMA cashier at the Community One (1) market to cash the money.
'The encashment of cheques amounting GH¢285,214.52 at Community One (1) market revenue office, the understatement of revenue amounting to GH¢19,220.17, the use of building permit fees, the use of unidentified receipt books, and an unseen GCR value book in 2010 to collect huge sums of revenue in 2011 without accounting to the Assembly at the Works Department had also resulted in a loss of thousands of Ghana cedis, which could have been used by the Assembly for its development activities,' the paper's source at the assembly revealed.
Thus, the earlier the management of the assembly takes measures to block the revenue leakages by intensifying its monitoring and supervision of revenue-related activities in the metropolis, the better.
According to the paper's sources at the assembly, the audit report recommended the recovery of the losses from the officers involved, after which their cases should be reported to the law enforcement agencies for further investigations to unearth others involved in the exchange of cheques for cash at both the Community One (1) market revenue office and the Works Department.
The Chronicle is in possession of photocopies of payments of GH¢3,000 and GH¢2,000 made by Salassie Adih and Margaret Mensah respectively, and undertakings to the effect that they would pay GH¢1,000 monthly until the completion of the payment of the full amount of money.
When contacted on phone for his reaction, the Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive, Robert Kempes Ofosuware, confirmed the story, and added that he had instructed his Coordinating Director, Mr. Charles Neequaye Kotey, to report the case to the Tema police for action to be taken. At the time of filing this report, all the five suspects were still at post.