Pension Scandal: ¢83 Billion Siphoned

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MFEP) has uncovered a fraudulent machinery, under which some workers of the Controller and Accountant-General's Department (CAGD), condoned and connived with certain pensioners to siphon an amount of ¢83 billion between January and March 2005 alone from state coffers.

The main tool of siphoning the state money was the use of ghost names particularly in the Northern and Ashanti regions, which involves the forgery of documents submitted to the pensions division of the Accountant-General's Department, from both regions afore-mentioned.

The forgery includes the submission of single names and single alphabetic initials with the help of officials of the pensions secretariat as well as some pensions contractors in the two regions.

A committee was set up by MFEP to audit pension payments for the period January to March 2005.

A significant observation made by the Committee of Auditors was the unusual high payments to some pensioners.