Osafo Maafo In Court Over Surcharge
Tricia
Senior Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo has appealed against the decision of the Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo, to surcharge him and four others.
According to an appeal filed before an Accra High Court, the Senior Minister and the other appellants are insisting that the Auditor General acted “unreasonably, capriciously and maliciously” towards them in blatant violation of his duty as a public officer when he refused to inspect and study the evidence of work done by Kroll Associates UK Limited as requested by him (Osafo-Maafo).
The appeal is also challenging the investigations carried out by Mr. Domelevo as the Senior Minister suggested that the Auditor General does not have the powers to investigate and make findings of breaches of the procurement law.
Genesis
The Auditor-General has claimed that Mr. Osafo-Maafo and the Finance Ministry have colluded to pay the UK firm, Kroll and Associates Limited, $1 million for no evidence of work done.
The UK firm in 2017 was contracted by the Senior Minister to recover assets from identified wrongdoers, among others.
According to the Senor Minister, the firm had done the work it was contracted to do and that there was enough evidence of work done.
But the Auditor General later claimed that after audit, there was no evidence of work done by Kroll and Associates Limited and yet huge sums of money were paid to the company.
He subsequently imposed a disallowance and surcharge on the Senior Minister and four others involved in the contract.
Appeal
Not satisfied with the decision of the Auditor General to disallow and surcharge him and four others, the Senior Minister and has filed an appeal against the decision before an Accra High Court.
Other appellants include Michael Ayesu, Abraham Kofi Tawiah, Eva Asselba Mends, and Patrick Nomo, all officers at the Ministry of Finance.
The appeal avers that the determination by the Auditor General that the payment of GH¢4,869,421.87 without approval from Parliament and the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) and thus offended Article 181 of the Constitution violates the appellants rights of hearing as same did not form part of either the audit observations issued to the Ministry of Finance or the final report of the Auditor General laid before Parliament.
It said the Auditor General “committed a grave and fundamental error of law in purporting to investigate and make findings of breaches of the procurement law by the appellants when he had no such authority at law.”
Some of the errors of law committed by the Auditor General, according to the appeal, include the claim that he is not vested with power to conduct investigations to establish procurement breaches, neither was he authorized by the PPA to carry out the purported investigations relating to the alleged contraventions of the Procurement Act.
It also adds that Article 2 (1) of the 1992 Constitutions requires a person who alleges that an act or omission of any person in contravention of the Constitution to bring an action in the Supreme Court for a declaration to that effect.
This, the appeal states the Auditor General failed to do but acted SuoMotu (acting on his own initiative) to determine the constitutionality of an act.
