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General news for Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Source: angelonline.com.gh
2020-10-28
Dr. Stephen Opuni, former head of COCOBOD
A state witness in the ongoing trial of the former COCOBOD chief and two other individuals told the Superior Court that a report presented as evidence by the Attorney General has been tampered with.
The fifth prosecution witness, Dr. Emmanuel Yaw Osei-Twum, from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Ghana, made the disclosure while being questioned by attorney Nutifafa Nutsukpui, Seidu Agongo’s alternate lead counsel.
The report in question is the work of the Department of Chemistry when it was contracted by EOCO to analyze Lithovit Fertilizer, a product of Agricult Ghana Limited.
The report submitted by the state attorneys to the court has additional columns created with information that is supposed to be part of the Chemistry Department report the witness worked on.
But Dr. Emmanuel Yaw Osei-Twum was clear and emphatic that the content of the report in its current form, as it is in the evidence, is not an accurate reflection of his work.
The attorney investigated further, for the avoidance of doubt, whether the witness was not part of the alleged altered report in which someone apparently handwritten in ink to add “credibility to the report.”
The witness was categorical in his response: “No, we didn’t. We didn’t write them in ink, we didn’t put those vertical lines. Our original report did not have them. “
Read excerpts from the cross-examination below:
Q. Now sir, when did you get the MSDS, at what stage of your work?
A. We had started the work, we had determined the driving components of the sample and we had started to do the digestion, so it could be four days later.
Q. Who did you get the MSDS from?
A. EOCO provided us with the MSDS.
Q. And sir, what particular type of Lithovit did you think you were working on?
A. I would not know, my lord. We were asked to determine the composition.
Q. So sir, how did you know that the MSDS EOCO gave you was actually related to the sample you were working on?
A. The MSDS gave us the components and our analysis showed us that the sample had the same components but at a very low concentration.
Q. Sir, in your report you had identified the different types of Lithovit, that is correct.
A. That is correct
Q. And all these different types have different components. that’s true.
A. There are two groups The first group will contain roughly the same components. The second group, one of them contains urea and the second was NPK, N represents nitrogen, P represents phosphorus and K represents potassium.
Q. Now sir, you see that you are not suggesting that the Lithovit organic fertilizers that is in the first group that identified that all those fertilizers have the same constituents in the same values, are you?
A. No, I am not.
Q. So those individual products have their own MSDS, that’s true.
A. I can’t say right now because EOCO just mentioned Lithovit.
Q. Sir, you see, because you had the MSDS after writing this report, someone used ink in an attempt to give their work credibility by writing the assumed MSDS values on the right side of the table you have drawn, that is correct.
A. My Lord, if someone did, we didn’t.
Q. Sir, can you see on the right hand side of Table 2 on page 6 of your report that someone had handwritten the Safety Data Sheet at the top and the assumed values from that Safety Data Sheet with ink?
A. Yes, I can see
Q. And according to you, you did not do this, those written in ink
A. No, we did not. We didn’t write them in ink, we didn’t put those vertical lines. Our original report did not have those
Q. Sir, you see, even though you didn’t do the silicon dioxide test, you will notice that, curiously, the person who made the modifications to your report indicated below the table the chemical symbol for silicon dioxide and provided a value in against him, that’s true. .
A. My Lord, we did not.
Q. Please, does that appear in the report you have now?
A. It does appear in the report that I have in hand, but as I said, we don’t know anything about it and, Sir, if the MSDS has been submitted as evidence, you will have realized that the numbers are correct. My Sir. the only mistake made by whoever wrote it changed the values of CaCo3 and MgCo3
Q. Now sir, when you say the values are correct but you never actually tested that sample for silicon dioxide, are you being honest?
R. My Lord, we are being very sincere.
Q. So, in your experience, is it credible work to attribute components and values that you never evaluated in any sample? Is it credible work?
A. My Lord, we do not test silicon or silicon dioxide. As our original report stands, it is very credible.
Former Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) Chief Executive Officer Dr. Stephen Opuni, businessman Seidu Agongo, and Agricult Ghana Company Limited face 27 counts of deliberately causing a financial loss of ¢ 217 to the state, through three separate contracts of supply of fertilizers between 2014 and 2016.
They have pleaded not guilty to all charges and are on self-recognition bail of ¢ 300,000 each.
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