Former Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu has said that the accusation of procurement breaches that were made against former Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo, had been cooked by the Akufo-Addo government in an enterprise of vengeance and vendetta.
In a commentary on the latest corruption scandal of the Akufo-Addo government (Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang Manu’s perjury before Parliament over the botched Sputnik V vaccine purchase, Mr. Amidu points out the accusation was a trumped-up one.
“In the President Akufo-Addo Government’s desperation for vengeance, the EOCO hauled in the Auditor-General for alleged procurement malpractices involving the absence of public procurement authority approval in a case in which the Auditor-General was clearly not involved in the procurement process or of any breaches thereof,” Amidu wrote in his latest explosive episode.
“The revenge exacted by the President on Mr. Daniel Domelevo, as an Auditor General exercising the independent constitutional functions assigned to his office under the Constitution as the Auditor General was a clear interference in the performance of the functions of the Auditor-General by the President for making audit findings against members of The Family and yet the doubting Thomases could not again see nor hear.
“What makes Daniel Domelevo’s government manufactured procurement suspected breaches warranting EOCO harassment different from the Government’s own breaches of the Public Procurement Act and article 181(5) of the Constitution”, he wrote.
It would be recalled that as part of his tumultuous resignation from office as Ghana’s first-ever Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu had complained that his appeal to President Akufo-Addo to allow Domelevo, an Auditor General who was popular with the public because of his stance on corruption, had not been heeded.
Akufo-Addo had hounded out the Auditor General, using first a forced leave, and then later, an arbitral dismissal on trumped-up charges including claims that he was a Togolese and that he had also presented false age information about himself.
The cooked charges that Mr. Martin Amidu writes about are in respect of some Toyota vehicles that the Audit Service Board had purchased in 2019.
A supposed private citizen had written to the Economic and Organized Crimes Office (EOCO) that Mr. Domelevo and the Board had ordered Ghc6.2million worth of vehicles from Toyota Ghana without recourse to the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) and consequently breaching the Procurement Law, Act 663.
Mr. Domelevo had however denied all the allegations and described the petition as a “storm in a teacup.”
He had explained that when the alleged procurement breaches were brought to his attention, the service had not paid for the vehicles until the Public Procurement Board directed that the monies be paid.
He had dared the government to show proof that he had effected any payments to Toyota Ghana
“The supplier, Toyota Ghana Company Limited, was not paid at the time of the investigation for the supply of the vehicles amounting to the sum of GH¢6.1 million,” he stated.
He had said when the investigations concluded that no money had been paid to the supplier, the Board of the Public Procurement Authority ordered that the Audit Service should take immediate steps to pay the supplier.
“So we were simply complying with the directive of the Public Procurement Board, so that debt is legally genuine,” he said.
But EOCO had opened an investigation into the issue while the ruling NPP’s pressure group, Alliance for Accountable Government (AFAG) had demanded the removal of Domelevo from office.
Ultimately, the issue had become too unreliable for the government to use as a basis to sack Domelevo. Eventually what was used were his age and his supposed Togolese nationality.