They have been accused of fraudulently procuring the controversial $72 million Operating Business Suite (OBS) contract awarded to Perfect Business Solutions.
Former Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Ernest Thompson and four others have been charged with 29 offenses by the Attorney General.
The state arraigned Ernest Thompson and the four others,former head of IT Department, Caleb Kwaku Afaglo; former OBS project manager, John Hagan Mensah and Juliet Hasana Kramah of IT Company Perfect Business Systems as and Peter Hayibor the former General Counsel of SSNIT on Tuesday.
They have been accused of fraudulently procuring the controversial $72 million Operating Business Suite (OBS) contract awarded to Perfect Business Solutions.
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The charges leveled against the five accused persons include conspiracy to wilfully cause financial loss to the state, willfully causing financial to the state, defrauding by false pretense, contravention of Public Procurement Act, possession of forged documents, authoring forged documents among others.
EOCO started investigating SSNIT in August 2017 after it became public knowledge that the Trust paid $72 million on the procurement and installation of a software and other hardware systems known as the Operational Business Suite (OBS) to digitize SSNIT’s operations.
Investigations showed that the General Manager of MIS at SSNIT, Caleb Afaglo, who was appointed to the position in 2015, applied to the job with fake degrees.
The accused persons all pleaded not guilty to the charges.