Abu Jinapor explains involvement with Korle Bu
A Deputy Chief of Staff, Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor has spoken about the corruption allegations levelled against him by musician, Kwame Asare Obeng, alias A Plus and explained his involvement in the Korle-Bu and UniBank matter.
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According to him, he tried to deal with a complaint levelled against the hospital by UniBank Ghana Limited to the effect that the management of Korle-Bu had abrogated an existing memorandum of understanding (MoU) with them without a reason and that the hospital had not treated them fairly.
He said he only acted on the complaint in his capacity as a Deputy Chief of Staff designated to handle complains and petitions brought before the presidency.
Background
Musician A Plus in August this year accused Mr Jinapor and his colleague Mr Francis Asenso Boakye of interfering with the management of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. In his opinion, such interference amounted to corruption.
The matter was later investigated by the Police Criminal Investigations Department (CID) who concluded that the allegations were baseless, unsubstantiated and lacked credibility.
Involvement
Speaking in a radio interview with Accra-based Joy FM, Mr Jinapor said UniBank forwarded a complaint to the presidency that the hospital had treated them unfairly by ruling them out of a new revenue collection strategy which was previously handled by them and another bank.
“Korle Bu intended to roll out another phase of revenue collection and from the reasoning of Korle Bu they required one bank to collect the revenue so one of the banks must go. UniBank lodges this complain to say they were not permitted to participate in the process leading to the selection of a bank to collect this sole bank collecting revenue programme that Korle Bu wanted to roll out.”
He explained that it was not unusual for the bank to lodge the complaint since as a Deputy Chief of Staff, he had been designated by the Chief of Staff as the officer responsible for complaints and petitions.
“The complaint having been made, I picked up the phone and called a colleague appointee of the president, a colleague member of government, the CEO of Korle Bu and I sought to seek clarification from him in respect of the complaint that I had received but he said he was at a function in Sogakope and said he would call back,” he explained further.
“We barely spoke about the matter and I mentioned this matter to Mr Asenso Boakye and he also called him once to seek clarification from him. That is it…we never went back to him about it because having spoken to him and waiting for his response which never came, I mentioned the matter to the Minister of Health, and my boss, the Chief of Staff and the Minister of Health promised and committed to deal with it and that we should leave it to him,” he added.
Mr Jinapor noted that so far as he was concerned, he had dealt decisively with the matter by passing it on to the sector minister.
“So far as I was concerned and so far as Mr Asenso Boakye was concerned we had dealt with the matter conclusively because we had reported to the appropriate sanctioning official minister who had committed to deal with the matter,” he said.