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Ernest Thompson and four others who have been accused of causing financial losses of more than $ 14.8 million in the SSNIT Operational Business Suite (OBS) project.
The State is modifying the charges against the former Director General of the Social Security and National Security Trust (SSNIT), Ernest Thompson, and four others, accused of deliberately causing financial losses to the State in relation to the Operating Business Suite (OBS Contract) .
Thompson and his four accomplices are said to have caused a loss of more than $ 66 million on an OBS contract, which sought to provide the country with a state-of-the-art pension management system.
All have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
On March 17 of this year, the Supreme Court ruled that the charges preferred against Mr. Thompson and four others by the State were inappropriate and did not meet constitutional requirements.
Ms. Yvonne Attokorah Obuobisah, Director of the Public Ministry (DPP), said that the State obtained the judgment of the Supreme Court on March 24 of this year.
According to the DPP, “we have analyzed it and now we are modifying the charges for causing financial losses to the State. If they can give us two weeks, we can file the amended charges. “
Samuel Cudjoe, Thompson’s attorney, said he had just received the Supreme Court ruling and prayed they would be given enough time to study the new charges.
The matter was postponed until April 22.
The other defendants are John Hagan Mensah, manager of information technology (IT) infrastructure at SSNIT and later project manager for Operational Business Suite (OBS); Juliet Hassana Kramer, CEO of Perfect Business System (PBS) and Silverlake Structured Service Limited; Caleb Kwaku Afaglo, former General Manager of Management Information Systems (MIS) at SSNIT; and Peter Hayibor, SSNIT Counselor.
All five were previously charged with 29 counts of conspiracy, intentionally causing financial losses to the state and also in violation of the Public Procurement Law.
In addition, Afaglo has been accused of defrauding under false pretenses, possession of forged documents and tampering with forged documents.
They have been released on bail of self-discovery by the court.
The facts are that in June 2010, SSNIT developed a Strategic Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Plan to reflect current changes in its operational processes and adjust to new trends in the ICT industry.
The prosecution said the plan provided for the development and implementation of new software solutions such as Operational Business Suite (OBS) to provide a state-of-the-art turnkey pension management system for SSNIT.
He said that SSNIT announced the international public tender in the media for the development and implementation of the project.
According to the indictment, although an entity described as Perfect Business Systems Limited (PBS) did not participate in the tender in November 2012, the contract was jointly awarded to Silverlake, a Malaysian IT solutions provider, and PBS allegedly as a consortium for a contract sum. of $ 34,011,914, including 14% for contingencies and 17.5% for value added tax.
The prosecution said the goal of the project was to automate all core processes in implementation and integrate all internal systems as well as external SSNIT stakeholders.
He said the contract, which covered SSNIT’s headquarters and branches, with a total of 55 sites, was due to be completed in 18 months.
“The project included the supply and installation of hardware and software development, data conversion and migration, as well as the system integration of all components and maintenance support.”
Contrary to the terms of the contract, the Attorney General said, Thompson, Juliet and Afaglo had SSNIT pay PBS for items that were already covered by the contract sum, thus “inflated” the contract from $ 34,011,914 to $ 66,783,148 for what it was denominated of diverse forms like “Orders of change” and “Variations”.
The prosecution also said that the so-called Variation or Change of Order was carried out at the request of Thompson, Mensah, Juliet and Afaglo.
He said Thompson authorized some payments that were above his threshold as CEO and were contrary to the Public Procurement Act.
The Prosecutor’s Office said that on January 15, 2016, SSNIT entered into a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the so-called consortium (PBS / Silverlake), represented by Juliet, for the sum of $ 2,570,967 per year for maintenance and warranty for three years.
The prosecution said that although the maintenance and guarantee agreement was executed in 2016, the payment began from September 2014 when no service had been provided at that time.
Payments were made against the terms of the OBS Contract and also the Corporate Law Manager’s notice against the payment, resulting in a two-year unearned payment of $ 5,141,905.66 by SSNIT to the ‘Consortium’ through Mensah.
The prosecution said Hayibor witnessed Thompson’s signing on the SLA.
According to the prosecution, the investigations established that the OBS system did not work as contracted, but Thompson authorized the various payments, resulting in the loss of these amounts.
The prosecution said further investigations also revealed that Juliet allegedly represented a non-existent PBS company, adding that she had no capacity to represent Silverlake.
In Afaglo’s case, the prosecution said that when applying for employment at SSNIT, he submitted and relied on educational certificates and qualifications that he did not possess.
“Based on those bogus certificates, he got a job at SSNIT as General Manager of MIS on October 1, 2015.”
The prosecution said the Afaglo certificates that he claimed were obtained from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Cincinnati were not genuine.
