By Innocent Samuel Appiah

INTERDICTED ACTING Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Export Development & Investment Fund (EDIF), Adjabeng Antwi-Adjei, has dared the Fund’s Board Chairman, Prof. Francis Dodoo to come out with proof that some funds had been embezzled by him and two other top officials of the Secretariat, who were interdicted on June 23, 2011.

The other affected officers interdicted are the Director of Audit, Kobina Ohemeng Ntiamoah and Director of Finance, Atta Quansah.

Prof. Dodoo, flanked by Cynthia Pamela Addo, acting CEO of the Secretariat and Juliana Asante, a Board member, had told journalists recently at a hurriedly organised press conference that even though three consultants were contracted to conduct an independent assessment on the mango project for 2011 and to establish whether some fraud or misappropriation had been committed at a cost of GHc51,434.00, the Auditor General’s Department was yet to commence investigations into instances that led to the embezzlement of some huge amount of money by the three top officials of the Fund.

But speaking to this reporter in an interview on the allegations leveled against them, Mr. Antwi-Adjei asked how the Board Chairman who had not even spent six months on the Board, without having conducted an audit, arrived at such hasty conclusion, questioning how Prof. Dodoo got to know that there was embezzlement or fraud. “It is just his assumption, he has no evidence,” he opined.

“There is nothing like embezzlement. Each year, we have our accounts audited by Ernst & Young and we have never been queried on any issues. The accounts have not been audited by the Auditor General to be found that we have embezzled some funds. The Auditors are yet to audit us and you have already proven us guilty. Let us have a forensic audit and stop destroying our hard won reputation,” he maintained.

Mr. Antwi-Adjei lamented that Prof. Dodoo, who joined the EDIF Board in March this year, has not even gone through the financial statements but because of having an agenda against the officials, he goes about defaming them, a situation he described as very unfortunate.

He has therefore asked the acting Board Chairman not to associate them with any act of fraud or impropriety since they have not committed any such crime, saying, “If Prof. Dodoo has an agenda, we are pleading for fair deal. We are ready for prosecution if found culpable. He should give the auditors the chance to do their work and stop being economical with the truth. If we don’t get justice from EDIF, we will get it from elsewhere.

“The whole thing seems as if the acting Board Chairman has planned something to implement. But you know what? We kept our cool all this while since we have not done anything and never supplied anything. We would not have reacted to the allegations but for damaging of our reputation. The emotional trauma we are going through is unbearable,” he said.

Mr. Antwi-Adjei noted that since he started work at EDIF in 2002 as Director of Development and Promotion, until his appointment as CEO in June 2009, Ernst & Young, an international auditing firm, has been auditing EDIF’s management every year, saying that, there had not been any instance where the management had been found culpable of any fraudulent act.

He lamented that even though consultants were engaged to conduct investigations into what they had been accused of, and for which reason they were interdicted, the outcome of the investigations was yet to be released, and therefore finds it exceptionally strange that such a treatment was being meted to them, “especially when we have not involved ourselves in any act of impropriety whatsoever.”

He asserted that barely two months after Prof. Dodoo joined the Board, “he gave me a query concerning this same issue of not seeking Board approval. But I told him the global budget had already been approved for the grants and also that for the credit within the total EDIF budget. If they want to micro-manage us, why then are we there?”

“When we were asked to proceed on leave on May 30, 2011, another letter followed to interdict us on June 23, and the purpose of the interdiction was to investigate the alleged fraud and our complicity, if any. Initially, they thought the farms we have documented never existed. And they assumed that we have made authorization of some cheques so that the farmers would go and withdraw them so we would share,” he stressed.

The EDIF Board during the review of its first quarter financial statements noticed some irregularities in disbursement of monies paid towards the mango project for 2011. Preliminary investigations revealed that monies had been disbursed without Board approval. This led the Board to request the officials involved to proceed on leave.

A Special Committee to review the matter was set up to investigate issues of process and substance as far as disbursement of funds on the mango project was concerned, make observations and findings on professional conduct of staff involved.

The Committee later on recommended that a full audit on the mango project be commissioned to ascertain matters including the selection process for farmers, ownership and title of farms, accuracy of acreages, whether beneficiaries of facilities actually received amounts approved, procurement process on supply of inputs, and viability and sustainability of the mango project.

Meanwhile, sources close to the Castle revealed that following The Heritage’s publication on attempts to get Ms Addo appointed as the CEO of EDIF, a top government official and Prof. Dodoo have dropped Ms Addo’s bid and are now pushing for another woman so as to enable Prof. Dodoo to continue to push his agenda through.