Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu has explained why he failed to commence investigations on the sacked Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of the Public Procurement Authority(PPA), AB Adjei, even though he knew more than a year ago that he had received some GHC 41 million in his private account.
In August 2019, the President referred the PPA boss to the Office of the Special Prosecutor led by Martin Amidu for investigations after investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni uncovered that the PPA boss had set up a company that won government contracts and sold them to the highest bidder.
But more than a year after the referral to his office, Mr Amidu has given reasons for which he failed to investigate the matter, stressing that investigators who had commenced work on the matter before the matter was brought to his attention are to blame.
“My Office never started investigations into the “Contract for Sale” allegations because of the attitude of the investigators into the on-going investigations into the procurement malpractices the Office was handling before the referral from the presidency, and this explains why Mr. Manasseh Azure has still not been invited to make a witness statement,” Martin Amidu revealed.
The PPA boss has been dismissed by the President following revelations by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice(CHRAJ) that he was involved in conflict of interest when as PPA boss, he awarded contracts to his own company and resold them for his own gain.
CHRAJ also revealed that he, among others, was unable to explain the sources of huge sums in his varied bank accounts.
But Mr AB Adjei hit back at CHRAJ indicating that the report was unfair, and that they relied on an investigative work deliberately skewed against him.
