The ACC Commissioner has said in Freetown that his Commission has completed investigations into inflated price contracts at the Ministry of Defence under the Koroma regime.
Francis Ben Kaifala who was briefing the media on the ACC’s stance on the recently published Auditor General’s Report told the meeting that the ACC has completed a number of investigations on a lot of issue regarding corruption, procurement irregularities but that they have withheld the outcome of such investigations prior to the final report of the Commissions of Enquiry which according to him was also equally looking at the same issues.
I would immediately called a press conference to make my position clear on a number of these issues and many persons of Interest would either be charged to court or be caused to refund stolen monies.
The just concluded Commissions of Enquiry looked at key corruption related issues in almost all Government Ministries and parastatals at a time the ACC had already commenced investigations at such issues.
Lawyers for the persons of interest had stated that it was an issue of double jeopardy since their clients were also at the ACC for the same issues.
It was believed that the ACC could have halted some of these investigations mainly to give way to what the COI would produce in terms of these investigations.
Such investigations had included persons such as Bai Mahmoud Bangura and the various Youths Project,Paolo Conteh and the inflated vehicles and Military Barracks contracts and a number of others.
The 2014 Auditor General’s Report had exposed Nabib Basma a foreign Lebanese man of having inflated a contract for the supply of military vehicles to the tune of USD 6.1 Million United States Dollars. The GTT report of July 2018 had also raised a number of these procurement irregularities and had called for investigation.