SSNIT Saga: EOCO Orders Release Of Afaglo’s Passport

The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) has been ordered to release the passport of head of SSNIT’s Management Information Systems, Dr Caleb Afaglo.

The Accra High Court presided over by Justice Henry Kwofie, held that the accused person had already been granted self – recognisance bail by the court and therefore there was no need for EOCO to continue to keep his passport.

The ruling by the court followed an application by lawyers of the accused.

EOCO seized the passport of Afaglo on April 18, 2017, during investigations into the alleged scandal.

In a ruling on Friday, November 2, the court, presided over by Mr Justice Henry Kwofie, held that the accused person had already been granted self – recognisance bail by the court and therefore there was no need for EOCO to continue to keep his passport.

Accused persons

The other four accused persons standing trial in relation to the scandal are – Mr Ernest Thompson, the immediate past Director – General of SSNIT, John Hagan Mensah, a former IT Manager at SSNIT; Juliet Hassana Kramer, the CEO of Perfect Business Systems (PBS); and Peter Hayibor, the lawyer for SSNIT.

They have been charged with a total of 29 counts for allegedly causing financial loss of more than $14 million to the state in relation to the alleged scandal.

Background

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.

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.

Prior to his appointment at SSNIT, Dr Afaglo had worked as IT consultant for the Trust, National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), and at MTN Ghana and Action Chapel International as the Data Services Supervising Engineer.

He had also served as the head of IT department at SIMNET GHANA and Dominion University. He was also a consultant at GLICO Insurance.