SSNIT: A chapter of fraud

The Ghanaian Chronicle says nearly five months after it made contact with labour leaders serving on SSNIT's board about their strange silence on a damning audit report that implied possible insolvency of the nation's repository of pension funds, no material response from the Trade unionists has come.

The paper says in the front-page capture that it was told by Mr. Napoleon Kpoh in a telephone conversation that he was unaware that the 1997 audited accounts of the institution was so much in red that Coopers and Lybrand, the auditors, put the dreaded seal of a disclaimer on the records.

The international firm had discredited the 1997 accounts of SSNIT describing it as too chaotic and out of control with no reliable system to monitor movement of cash.

Chronicle writes that not a single member of the 15-member SSNIT board has made any disclosure of the festering rot gnawing the institution. "The Board Chairman, a pre-literate former clearing agent, Mr. Joe Boateng, would not countenance any discussion with Chronicle on pertinent issues about SSNIT, including his own suitability," states the paper.

Chronicle furthers that it is impossible to rationalise the conspiratorial inaction that followed the report except to deduce that the Board and the authorities that put them in place were complicit.

It says Mr. Henry Dei, Mr. Arthur and Mr. Kofi Ahlijah who were main pillars of the Trust walked off the job into their private worlds and stuck the Trust and the incoming administration with the debts and bad books.

Chronicle has on Tuesday put the matter to Mr. Henry Dei that he bequeathed a legacy of debts, bad investments and unserviceable loans running into over 100's of billions of cedis to the Trust.

He would however not admit the gloomy portrayal but stressed that he had laid a good foundation for the future.