A box containing exhibits of pink sheets submitted by the petitioners belonging to Justice William Atuguba, which was initially thought to have eluded the independent accounting firm KPMG, has been found, Daily Guide has learnt.

Reliable sources within the Supreme Court told DAILY GUIDE that the discovered box and its contents would add up to the 9,800 pink sheets evidence already counted by KPMG and this could, therefore, bring the total number served on Justice Atuguba, whose exhibits were voted to be used as a ‘control mechanism’, to within the range of the 11,842 exhibits filed by the petitioners.

When contacted, Joe Winful, a senior partner at KPMG, declined to make any comment citing ethical grounds. “I won’t be able to confirm and give you figures…, whatever we are doing is still not finished and until we submit our report, I cannot tell you anything that we are working on which has not been communicated to our client,” he told DAILY GUIDE on Monday.

He insisted that the auditing firm was currently preoccupied with completing its work and presenting its findings to the parties in the petition before the Supreme Court resumed sitting on June 24, 2013, “…It will be very unprofessional to let people to be now speculating on numbers….As you well know, we cannot do that at KPMG.”

Daily Guide gathered that as at last week, the accounting firm had counted over 9,800 pink sheets belonging to Justice Atuguba, who heads the nine-member panel of justices sitting on the landmark election petition hearing.

In the course of the counting, it is believed that the auditors who were almost concluding that there were only about 9,800 pink sheets for the Presiding Judge, received a message from him that they should pick a box of pink sheet from the court Registrar which they had overlooked.

Daily Guide sources said Justice Atuguba had written to KPMG telling them that there was still one box with the registrar and that they should take and count its contents in addition to the 9,800 already counted.

However, according to sources, KPMG in their reply to Justice Atuguba copied to all the parties, asked the presiding judge to personally instruct the registrar to submit the box for counting.

They said otherwise they will include in their final report that there was an extra box of pink sheets with the registrar that was yet to be counted.

Daily Guide gathered that Justice Atuguba consequently complied by penning down his consent for the additional box to be counted.

Justice Atuguba then wrote to the Registrar to furnish the accounting firm with the ‘missing’ box which sources said would be containing about 2000 pink sheets.

The parties in the landmark suit recently agreed for Justice William Atuguba’s cache of exhibits to be used as a ‘control mechanism’ to assess whether the petitioners actually filed the number of evidence they claimed.

NDC Propaganda

The new twist to the controversy of Justice Atuguba’s pink sheets is a significant departure from estimations made last week by Nana Ato Dadzie -spokesperson for the first respondent (President John Mahama) and third respondents (NDC) in the petition.

He told journalists last Wednesday that KPMG’s count of the Presiding Judge’s copies only resulted in less than 10,000 pink sheets.

“…We all do know, both sides, we all do know that the KPMG figures are very clear; [they] are coming out which will show that, yes, our position is fairly correct that we’ve not been given more than 9000 and that in any case, what has been given out to the Judges couldn’t probably have been more than 10,000 or whatever it is,” he told journalists on Wednesday.

Strangely the NDC and John Mahama had refused to disclose the number of pink sheets received from the petitioners as served by the Registrar.

While Tsatsu Tsikata said he had about 7000 pink sheets, Asiedu Nketia said the NDC received a little over 8000 and now the respondents are running around with 9800 as the pink sheets served on the justices even when they were aware that KPMG was yet to finish with Justice Atuguba’s count.

Stalemate

The ongoing election petition was brought to a momentary halt after last week’s proceedings until June 24, 2012.

For several days, the cross-examination of Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan by the the petitioners’ lawyer, Philip Addison, was consistently interrupted by the respondents’ lawyers because they insisted they were not served with most of the pink sheets Addison was using for his cross-examination.

They claimed that they were served with barely 8,000 pink sheets out of the 11,842 that the petitioners were claiming. These are the pink sheets on which the petitioners claimed gross malpractices and irregularities occurred which have compromised the outcome of the December 2012 presidential elections.

The respondents claimed their shortfall was due to a possible ‘compromising’ of the Supreme Court’s registry. Importantly, the lead counsel for the third respondent, Tsatsu Tsikata, thought the discrepancies “borders on criminality”; an allegation the court glossed over. This allegation has drawn strong protest from the petitioners.

The petitioners’ maintain that they duly served all the parties the requisite documentations at the Supreme Court’s registry.

According to spokesperson for the petitioners, Gloria Akuffo, they were confident of their claim because the registry issued them with official receipts covering all the exhibits from over 11,842 polling stations nationwide.