Executive Director of ASEPA, Mensah Thompson
Executive Director of the Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), Mensah Thompson has revealed it is going to petition the Special Prosecutor to investigate Sputnik V procurement breaches made by the Minister of Health.
ASEPA which was going to task the Criminal Investigative Department (CID) of the Police earlier to investigate the deal, believes this is a test case for the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng.
“We are not going to the CID to prosecute the case anymore. We are going to the Special Prosecutor and this will be his first test case. He promised to make corruption an expensive venture. It is through his investigations that we can prosecute those involved in this scandal. We will present the issue to him today and we expect him to start investigations tomorrow,” he told Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show.
According to him, the Minister of Health, Dr. Kwaku Agyeman Manu needs to be investigated for not only the Sputnik V deal but also for the COVID-19 testing at the Kotoka International Airport.
“He should be investigated specifically on why we contracted a company to conduct COVID-19 testing at the airport only for the minister to say he didn’t sign that contract. Till today, we have not seen the Frontiers contract. Secondly, we need to know why the Minister paid Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum for vaccines he never delivered, yet refused to refund the money.”
To him, the Minister as a chartered accountant and a former chair of the Public Interest Accountability Committee was not diligent in these cases.
The Parliamentary Committee probing the controversial Sputnik V vaccines procurement contract has recommended that the Finance Ministry retrieves GH¢16,331,640 paid to Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum.
This amount is said to have been paid by the government in the Health Ministry’s bid to procure the Russian vaccines through a middleman.
“The Committee found that the amount of $2,850,000.00 (representing 50% of the contract sum of $5,700,000.00) has been paid to Messrs Al Maktoum and this translates into the cedi equivalent of GH¢16,331,640.00 converted at the then prevailing exchange rate of US$1 to ¢5.73 whereas the Minister said he had no knowledge of payment under oath,” the report revealed.
These are the conclusions of a 28-page report on the findings of the Ad-hoc Committee investigating the contract between the government and Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum for the supply of Covid -19 vaccines.
The nine-member committee also looked into the circumstances under which the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, entered into a deal with the Sheikh and S.L Global without seeking Parliamentary approval.