Seven named in Le6.5billion fraud at Min.of Finance
By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Ministry of Finance has named 7 people who are involved in a Le6.5billion suspected fraud. In a statement from the Ministry on Friday, they say the case has now been forwarded to the Anti-Corruption Commission.
According to the Ministry’s statement, all seven people colluded to divert this amount of money which was meant to be a construction consultant, to a separate bank account.
” The Ministry of Finance wishes to inform the general public that following the conduct of an internal audit review on several payments made to Edward Davies and Associates Ltd, a consultancy firm hired by the Sierra Leone Roads Authority for work done on the Kenema-Pendembu Road, we discovered that these payments were diverted to a fictitious account opened at the Kabala Community Bank,” the statement noted.
Finance stated that last month, Le6.5Billion was processed by the AGD to be paid in to the bank account of Edward Davies and Associates Ltd which is located at Rokel Commercial Bank, but these seven men colluded to divert it to a different bank account.
The most high profile staff named in the scandal was the Deputy Director of Budget, Jacob Tenga Sessie. Five out of the seven named work at different levels at the Accountant General Department (AGD), a department responsible to disburse payments to contractors on behalf of government.
John Ellie, who is the Principal Accountant at the AGD, is the most high profile personality from the AGD who has been engulfed in this massive corruption scandal.
Starlyn Kemoh, Ibrahim Bangura, Joseph John, Philip Yomba are among those named, they are all accountants at the AGD with varying level of seniority.
Emmanuel Smart, is the only one who was named in the scheme that doesn’t work at the Finance Ministry. Smart is an Accounting Officer at the Sierra Leone Roads Authority, and his role to transfer this huge volume of money was key, like all others involved.
Epic Radio contacted ACC and they confirmed the details as stated by the Ministry. Public Relations Officer of the ACC, Sylvanus Blake said:”It is true, they have contacted us and all the seven people mentioned are under arrest and helping us with the investigations.”
Despite these arrests, there are now serious concerns about how high does this scandal go, and whether this scandal is an isolated case or could be a pattern with other government contracts.
