SSNIT OBS alleged scandal: Court rules on ‘submission of no case’, Nov 29

The Accra High Court will on November 29 rule whether or not to discharge a former Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Ernest Thompson and four others who are standing trial for allegedly causing financial loss of $15.3m to the state.

Thompson and the four others have filed a “submission of case”, which when successful, will allow the court to discharge them if the court is of the view that the prosecution had failed to establish a prima facie case for the accused persons to open their defence.

The accused persons filed the “submission of no case” after the prosecution closed its case after calling 10 witnesses to testify.

At yesterday hearing, the prosecution indicated to the court that it had filed its opposition to the “submission of no case”.

Consequently, the court, presided over Justice Henry Anthony Kwofie, a Justice of the Supreme Court, sitting as an additional High Court judge, adjourned the case to November 29 for ruling on the “submission of no case”.

Not guilty

Thompson is standing trial with four others - John Hagan Mensah, a former IT Manager at SSNIT; Juliet Hassana Kramer, the CEO of Perfect Business Systems (PBS); Caleb Kwaku Afaglo, a former Head of Management Information Systems (MIS) at SSNIT and Peter Hayibor, a former lawyer for SSNIT.

They have been accused of causing financial loss of more than $15.3m to the state in the SSNIT Operational Business Suite (OBS) project, which was meant to revamp the operations of SSNIT through Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

The accused persons have pleaded not guilty to 29 charges, including various counts of conspiracy to willfully cause financial loss to the state and willfully causing financial loss to the state.

Thompson and Kramer have separately pleaded not guilty to three counts of contravening the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663), while Kramer and Afaglo also pleaded not guilty to defrauding by false pretence.

Afaglo is alleged to have secured his employment at SSNIT with fake certificates and was accordingly charged with various counts of possession of forged documents and uttering forged documents, for which he has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecution’s facts

It is the case of the prosecution that in June 2010, SSNIT initiated the $34m OBS project to use Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to revamp its operations to enable it to provide a state-of-the-art pension administration system in the country.

It said the objective of the project was to automate all of SSNIT’s core processes in the administration of pension and “integrate all internal systems, as well as external stakeholders of SSNIT’’.

The contract sum, the prosecution argued, also ballooned from $34m to over $66m, although the OBS system failed to perform efficiently as the project contract had envisaged.

“The so-called variations or change orders were carried out at the instance of A1 (Thompson), A2 (Mensah), A3 (Kramer) and A4 (Afaglo) and authorised by A1 (Thompson), even though some of the payments were above his threshold as director-general and contrary to the Public Procurement Act,’’ the prosecution said.

The prosecution further said the OBS system was not working but Thompson continued to pay for its related expenses.

“Investigations established that although the OBS system was not performing as efficiently as contracted for, A1 (Thompson) gave authorisation for various payments which culminated in the losses. Investigations also indicated that PBS, purportedly represented by A3 (Kramer), is a non-existent company,’’ the prosecution added.

According to the prosecution, investigations also revealed that Afaglo “relied on certificates purporting to be educational certificates he did not possess’’ to gain employment at SSNIT as its general manager for MIS on October 1, 2015.

Writer’s email: emma.hawkson@graphic.com.gh