Parliament to discuss report on corruption in Judicial Service

Parliament will on Wednesday, discussed the report of the Public Accounts Committee of the House, which details various instances of corruption in the financial administration of the Judicial Service.

The report, which was laid before parliament on Tuesday, follows the committee’s examination of an audit into the account of the Judicial Service.

If the former Chief Justice I. K. Abban had been alive today, he would have had quite a number of questions to answer over his alleged complicity in the malfeasance within the judiciary somewhere in 1996-97.

In his absence, senior officers of the Judicial Service will now have to provide answers to some of the questions raised by Auditor General pertaining to procurement practices and the award of contracts in the service. A case in point is the fact that a supplier, Integrated Electronic Services, provided invoices in 1997 totaling 650 million cedis, exactly the same amount as the developmental budget for the year.

Integrated Electronic Service (IES), which seemed to have a special relationship with the Chief Justice Abban was supplying the Judicial Service with items ranging from basic consumables to hardware. The Public Accounts Committee recommends an SFO investigation into the transactions of the company between 1998 and 2000 while the Internal Revenue Service takes immediate steps to recover all taxes the company might have evaded.

The committee is also recommending that the police take immediate steps to prosecute a former financial controller of the Judicial Service, G. K Fordjuor, who allegedly demanded and received various sums of money in bribes from Integrated Electronic Service to enable him process their documents. On the other hand, deputy Judicial Secretary, N.C. A. Agbevor, was exonerated of any financial malpractice and it has been recommended that he takes up his position once again.