$72m SSNIT Saga: Ernest Thompson, Others Charged With Financial Loss

Some four officials of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) including the former Director General, Ernest Thompson have been charged with wilfully causing financial loss to the state.

Their indictment is as a result of an investigation by EOCO on the procurement of an ICT Software costing $72 million.

The Company Secretary of SSNIT speaking during a press conference Wednesday revealed that Juliet Hasana Korama who sold the software to SSNIT is also part of the indicted persons.

EOCO started investigating SSNIT in August 2017 after it emerged that the Trust had injected $72 million on the procurement and installation of a software and other hardware systems known as the Operational Business Suite (OBS) to digitize SSNIT’s operations.

The Trust had been widely lambasted over the project which is reportedly not fully functional.

The project included the installation of a software to ensure that its headquarters receives data directly from all of its offices.



The Board Chairman of SSNIT, Kwame Addo Kufuor, in an interview in August last year confirmed that about 15 people appeared before EOCO as witnesses in the matter.

SSNIT also contracted PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an audit into the contract.

In a 4-point statement released in 2017, “SSNIT said it expects the names of the people associated with the I.T (OBS) contracts to be released in the near future.”
SSNIT further assured that it will publish findings from the audit by PricewaterhouoesCoopers into the matter.

Fake MIS boss

Amidst the controversy, it emerged that the General Manager of MIS at SSNIT, Caleb Afaglo, who was appointed to the position in 2015, did not hold the right qualifications.

He was interdicted by the management of the Trust over suspicions that his Bachelors’, Masters’ and Doctorate degrees were fake.

EOCO conducted raids in his house, seized his passport and froze his bank account to commence investigations into his qualifications.

EOCO also reportedly interrogated members of Mr. Afaglo’s household, and confiscated a number of documents belonging to him.

The Management of SSNIT subsequently said it was fully convinced that the degrees were fake and has therefore taken the decision to sack Mr. Afaglo.

Mr. Afaglo’s CV indicated that he acquired his BSC and MBA from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a PHD from the Kennedy Western University, which was an affiliate of the University of Cincinnati until it was closed down in 2011.

Source:Starrfmonline.com