Lawyer Martin Kpebu Petitions SPO Over Ghc10m NDA Contract Fraud

Private legal practitioner, Martin Luther Kpebu, has petitioned the Special Prosecutor (SP), Kissi Agyebeng, to investigate an alleged contract padding at the Northern Development Authority (NDA).

The petition is reporting that the sum of a contract given to a company called A&Qs Consortium had been criminally padded.

The petition has been on the SP’s desk since June 15, 2022, Whatsup News has been finding out.

A&Qs Consortium was reportedly contracted to supervise the implementation of the Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP) in some communities in the Upper West Region.

The contract was given out at a sum of GHC5, 720,000. However, after the acting CEO, Dr. Alhassan Sulemana Anamzoya left office, the contract sum was illegally increased to GHC10, 400,000.00.

Per the letter, the way the perpetrators did this was to remove the page in the contract documents capturing the sum and replacing it with a new page with the new figure.

“However, when Dr. Alhassan Sulemana Anamzoya left office, the contract sum was illegally increased to ten million Ghana Cedis (GHC10, 400,000.00) in the manner. The page of the contract that bears the original contract sum ( of GHC5,720,000) but was not signed (as it did not mandatorily require) was removed and replaced with a fresh page containing the new figure (of GHC10, 400,000.00). The insertion in the contract makes it appear to be the original contract executed by the previous CEO,” the petition said.

It added further that the PPA approval for the original contract was 16th January 2020 while no PPA approval was sought and obtained for the increased sum.

Also, it said, the contract has since expired and yet the NDA has gone ahead to implement the same and paid about three million Ghana Cedis (GHC 3,000,000.00) so far with moves afoot to pay an additional five million Ghana Cedis (GHC5, 000,000.00).