Ghost Names Scandal A Castle

…Trouble Brews In CEPS
...As Chief of Staff’s Special Assistant imposes illegal Committee On CEPS

More revealing and worrisome evidence continue to pop up in the Sun’s investigations into the Ghost Names Scandal at Castle which could be traced to the door steps of Mr. Kwasi Ankamah, Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff at Osu Castle.

The paper has gathered that as part of his activities in running the affairs at the Seized Vehicles Committee that has been rocked with Ghost Names Ankamah, waded into the Custom Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS)and succeeded in setting up an illegal committee in the organization without due process from the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning who have the authority to do so. Ankamah’s action and inaction has created a deep animosity and bitterness within the set up of the CEPS which has the tendency to affect the revenue mobilization drive of the organization, The Sun has learnt.

The Sun’s investigations have picked evidence of pregnant and widespread discontent within CEPS over what some senior CEPS officials have described as unlawful and unwarranted meddling in the work of the Service. The source of the brewing trouble is an illegal committee the office of the Chief of Staff has formed within CEPS without recourse to the top management of the Service.

Last November, the Office of the Chief of Staff, through a letter signed by the special assistant to the Chief of Staff, Mr Kwasi Ankamah, appointed certain persons to serve on the said committee. The mandate of the committee is to manage uncustomed vehicles impounded by the Service in the northern sector of the country, a function the CEPS Law has mandated CEPS to perform. Last November, an attempt by The Sun to interview him about aspect of the issue in connection with illegal committee said to have been set up by him to dispose off seized vehicles in the northern sector resulted in threats that if the paper published anything about the seized vehicles, it would be sued to the point of it’s collapse

Under the Custom Excise and Preventive Service Act 634, the Minister for Finance & Economic Planning has been given the power to set up a committee to advise the CEPS Commissioner on the allocation or auction of such vehicles. This committee is already in place. But in a blatant and complete disregard for the law, the Chief of Staff’s Office has also established this second committee which reports directly to the Chief of Staff’s special assistant, Mr Ankamah, the paper has learnt.

What is causing so much bitterness and silent anger among the leadership and ranks of CEPS are the people appointed to serve on this committee. The Sun can reveal that one Emmanuel Aboagye, a rather strange character, is one of those who have been appointed on the illegal committee.

Aboagye is neither a staff of CEPS nor of any other public institution. What he has is that he is a personal crony of Mr Kwasi Ankamah. Nobody knows how and from where he draws his allowance as a member of the committee. But by his appointment, he is able to issue instructions to senior officers of CEPS who comply out of fear for the Chief of Staff.

The CEPS security men are particularly incensed that Aboagye sometimes walks through the CEPS entrance several times a day without signing the log book.

A yet another source of the simmering acrimony in the Service is the appointment of one George Kwapong to the committee. Kwapong who is the officer in charge of preventive activities in the Kumasi CEPS office, was appointed directly by the Chief of Staff’s office without any consultation with the CEPS Commissioner.

With the power of the Chief of Staff behind him, the directives of Kwapong now overrides that of his superiors, including the Commissioner, which is creating problems and grumbling within the Service.

“They are doing all this because they want to use the uncustomed vehicles to do their own deals,” one officer at the CEPS Head Office who pleaded anonymity remarked. “This is very bad. They are just destroying the Service.”

While Kwapong walks about with his lifted shoulders and his new-found powers, others seem to see the whole thing differently, “I think he is digging his own grave. What does he think would happen to him when the current Chief of Staff is no more in that office?” they ask.

Top Officials of CEPS declined comment when contacted on the developments. -Dominic Jale, dojale@yahoo.co.uk &Kofi Safo Antwi,kofisafo66@yahoo.com(THE SUN)