Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, the Manhyia South MP, has ripped the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) team to shreds.
The Manhyia South MP highlighted that the ORAL team, made up of Daniel Domelevo, Martin Kpebu, Raymond Archer, Ablakwa and Kofi Boakye, failed to apply their expertise to the work assigned to them by President Mahama.
Speaking in an interview on October 22, the lawmaker questioned, “Well, let me put it in the form of a question — what was the utility of the ORAL?”
He added, “When you look at the persons forming the committee, you have Daniel Domelevo, a very highly experienced auditor and former Auditor-General, Martin Kpebu, an experienced lawyer, and Commissioner retired Kofi Boakye, an experienced security person”.
“You had all these people on there with the current EOCO boss too there, and all they did was to receive documents and couldn’t even probe the usefulness or otherwise of the documents. And so they handed over the report to the President, including all garbage. Then what was the utility of it?”.
Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah highlighted that the ORAL team are the reason why the Attorney General is under a lot of pressure.
The MP added, “It does appear that they are part of the reason why there’s a lot of pressure on the Attorney General. And the Attorney General himself is also advancing it with the nature of information he’s putting in the public domain. I think that it’s really, really unfortunate. From what I’m hearing this evening, very unfortunate.”
According to the Manhyia South MP, Domelevo and Mr Kpebu failed to their experience to bear.
He detailed, “In fact, what was given to the Attorney General was an unrefined document. Mr Domelevo, very respectfully, failed to bring his experience, his expertise to bear on what he received. Mr Kpebu failed to bring his experience to bear on what he received.”
“He knows what is admissible, what is inadmissible, what is the weight of evidence. Very respectfully, he is about 18 years at the bar and qualifies to be a judge of even the Court of Appeal. He should be in a position to evaluate documents, and so if he couldn’t, then, very respectfully, the utility of the ORAL is really problematic.”
He emphasised, “It was of no use to the Attorney General. I made that point from day one on your platform. Today, very respectfully, with the grace of God, I think that our position has been vindicated by the confession of Mr Domelevo, Kofi Boakye, and Kpebu. It was a complete waste of time.”
His comments follow: Daniel Domelevo, a member of the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) team, has admitted that the ORAL team collected and compiled data which included garbage.
According to Domelevo, the ORAL team was limited to gathering complaints without a preliminary investigation.
Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on October 22, Mr Domelevo stated, “As for us, we just collected data and summed it up. We didn’t do any investigation”.
“A preliminary investigation may even show that some of the complaints were just noise. There’s nothing in it. But we collected the data as it did so, including the garbage.”
When asked to clarify the word “garbage,” Mr Domelevo explained, “Yes, because nobody came to us that we turned away and said, Yours we will not take.
So we collected all the information. Remember, we are not investigating. So when you come, we are not going to say that Mr Mensah substantiates what you are saying. So you just come and say that I know Mr Amaliba is involved in this, that, that, that, the amount is this. We look at the document you have, and we capture it. Some even came in the form of emails. What about if the person is just making it up?” he added.
Domelevo explained, “Being an experienced auditor, I know that you can even submit documents, and later on, when we test the document, the documents may not have any substance, or they may not be authentic,” he said. “So there will be a lot of garbage in it. There’s no two ways about that.”