3 GES officials, bank manager ‘chop’ GH¢175,000
Three officials of the Ghana Education Service (GES) and a bank manager in the Agona East District have been arrested by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for fraud.
Advertisement
The officials are accused of involvement in a scheme through which they defraud the state by paying salaries to non-existent employees whose names they put on the payroll.
The names of the three GES officials were given as Samuel Mensah, Personnel Human Resource Department; Douglas Kporbatsi, the Head of the Human Resource Department, and Castro Nkum, an administrative officer.
The banker, Samuel Appah, who allegedly collaborated with the officials, is the manager of a bank that was used to siphon the money from state coffers.
Sources at the Agona District Directorate of the GES told the Ghana News Agency that a fourth suspect, Paul Dzentu, the Head of the Integrated Personal Payroll Data (IPPD) of the Agona East District GES Directorate, is currently on the run.
According to the source, Isaac Amoakwah-Boadu, an accountant at the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department in charge of the Central Region, as well as Alfred Dagadu, an ex-agent of Izwe Loans, and Dzentu, who were also part of the fraud, withdrew more than GH¢175,000 of state money through the ghost-name scam.
The four GES officials, who handle recruitment, were said to have back-dated IPPD forms (a payment system used by the GES) of non-existent teachers and sent them to the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department.
As a result, huge sums of money were released to the bank in their names at the end of June, 2013.
The source said Nkum connived with the bank manager and withdrew part of the money and shared it among the other accomplices, including the bank manager.
It said the first cash withdrawal of GH¢170,000 was made at the Agona-Swedru Union Rural Bank on June 17, this year, out of which GH¢1,000 was given to each member of the syndicate, while the remaining was shared among the three syndicate leaders.
Reports indicate Nkum attempted to withdraw the rest of the money a week later but some top officials at the bank’s headquarters, suspecting foul play, tipped off the BNI, leading to his arrest and the arrest of the others.
A bench warrant has been issued for the arrest of the rest who are currently on the run, particularly the IPPD Coordinator, Dzentu; the ex-Izwe Loans agent, Dagadu, and his wife, Naomi Dagadu.
Source: GNA
