Ablakwa drags top Nat’l Cathedral official to CHRAJ for conflict of interest

The Member of Parliament for North Tongu Constituency, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, says he is heading to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to report one of the members of the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral Secretariat.

Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa has presented evidence, accusing the Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Secretariat, Rev Victor Kusi Boateng, of registering a company in a different name to transact business with the Secretariat.

Passports made available by the lawmaker showed the name, Kwabena Adu Gyamfi, who is registered as one of the three directors of JNS Talent Centre Limited. That firm was cited by National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP for receiving about GH¢2.6 million from the Secretariat for “no work done”.

According to the Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament, Rev Kusi Boateng is the same Kwabena Adu Gyamfi despite differences in age, TINs, professions and addresses on the passports.

“From unassailable and irreproachable documents in my possession, Rev. Victor Kusi-Boateng AKA Kwabena Adu Gyamfi uses multiple passports and multiple identification cards with different names and different dates of birth as his special modus operandi,” the MP wrote on Monday, January 16.

He later added: “These explosive findings make the conflict of interest charge in the GHS2.6million scandalous payment by the National Cathedral of Ghana to the shady JNS Talent Centre Limited even more blatant, direct, offensive and absolutely embarrassing.”

The lawmaker says he will proceed to CHRAJ on Monday at 1:00pm for the corruption-investigating body to invoke “its mandate under Article 218 of the 1992 Constitution to investigate the odious conflict of interest”.

He has also served notice to file an urgent question when Parliament resumes for the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, to inform Ghanaians why Rev. Victor Kusi-Boateng qualified for a diplomatic passport and the nature of due diligence, if any, her ministry may have carried out.

He said he will also file an urgent question for the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, on exactly what work JNS did to warrant the GH¢3.5 million transfer and why that transaction did not find expression in his GH¢339 million cathedral withdrawals as presented to the Vote of Censure Committee.

AblakwaCHRAJconflict of interestNational Cathedral