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Dr Kwabrna Donkor
Dr Kwabrna Donkor

CID invites Kwabena Donkor over AMERI

Personnel from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service have picked a laptop and four pen drives of the former Minister of Power, Dr Kwabena Donkor, from his residence.

The action of the CID followed a court order which directed the police to retrieve his laptop, iPad and mobile phones in connection with investigations into the AMERI deal in which the former minister was cited.

According to the Deputy Director of the CID, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACOP) Mrs Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, the CID had begun investigations into a case in which Dr Donkor had been accused of causing financial loss to the state through the AMERI deal.

She said as part of the evidence gathering procedures, the police went to court for an order to search the premises of the former minister.

Court order

The deputy director indicated that although the court gave an order for the aforementioned items, when the police got to his residence, Dr Donkor refused to hand over his phone and iPad so it was only the laptop and pen drives that they could retrieve from him.

She said the police went to court for an order to search his premises to retrieve his laptop, iPad and phones.

The court granted the order two weeks ago but they delayed searching the premises till yesterday morning as the police first sought legal guidance before taking the action, because he is a sitting Member of Parliament (MP).

Mrs Addo-Danquah said the former minister was not arrested because the police had just started the investigations and due processes would be followed till the conclusion of the case.

Search warrant

For his part, Dr Donkor said the police officers arrived at his house with a warrant demanding to search the premises and told him he was being investigated on suspicion of causing financial loss to the state.

Narrating what happened, he said he was sleeping in the morning when the staff in his house told him that there were police from the CID who wanted to enter the premises so he quickly dressed up and met them.

“They produced a warrant signed by an Accra Circuit Court. It said that application has been made to the court to permit the search on grounds that I have caused financial loss to the state. And this was the first time I was hearing about it," he said.

Dr Donkor who is also the MP for Pru East said he allowed them in and they took two hours searching the house, taking along with them his pen drives and personal laptop.

“In any case, if they were investigating AMERI, I probably didn’t expect that as a sitting MP, they should come to me with a search warrant,” he said.

Background

The Ameri deal was signed as an emergency power agreement in February 2015, between the government represented by the Minister of Power and Ameri Energy, to ameliorate the country’s power challenges at the time.

But media reports indicated the cost of the project was outrageously high. The Nana Akufo-Addo government, therefore, set up a committee to look into the deal.

The committee, led by a private legal practitioner,Mr Phillip Addison, in its report, disclosed that it found technical and financial lapses in the contract.

On the financial side, the committee found out that although AMERI secured the deal, the developer that built and financed the plant charged $360million yet AMERI forwarded a bill of $510million in the agreement.

Dr Donkor at a press conference in April this year stated that due diligence was done in the purchasing of the plant and did not understand how the previous government was being accused of wrongdoing.

 Parliamentary approval

“The agreement went through Cabinet, the Committee on Mines and Energy, recommended by consensus and was passed by Parliament.”

“If there was fraud, why wouldn’t the committee recommend straight away the termination of the contract and take criminal action?” Dr Donkor queried.

He said he had nothing against the police;because they were a doing professional job “but whoever sent them has muddied the waters,” stating his willingness to meet “them” in court.

He hinted that some discussions had been taking place, adding “indeed yesterday, from Koforidua, I spent about two hours with Mr K.T. Hammond as there is some process on the way for all of us to understand what the issues are if there are any.”

Dr Donkor bemoaned the way the state was going about the issue, warning Ghanaians would be the final judges of what was playing out although he had not been invited to the police headquarters.

The former minister said he would wait to go to the Police Headquarters at a “reasonable” time to pick his personal laptop.

“I will petition the Speaker. I am a sitting MP and there is a certain protocol which I think has not been handled as it ought to be. The executive arm is in power and whatever they want to do it is up to them,” he told a radio station in Accra.

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