Minister for Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu has disclosed that former Minister for Health Kwaku Agyemang-Manu will face legal costs in the coming weeks over the controversial procurement of Sputnik V vaccines and associated dealings with Frontiers Healthcare Service, in what is predicted to be one of the vital accountability circumstances linked to COVID-19 spending.
According to him, preparations for the prosecution are already at a sophisticated stage as authorities transfer to pursue authorized motion over selections taken in the course of the nation’s pandemic response.
“The former Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang Manu will be charged in the coming weeks over the Sputnik V vaccine purchase and Frontiers Healthcare Services,” Kwakye Ofosu said, on TV3 on Saturday, March 14. indicating that prosecutors are at present getting ready formal costs.
The controversy dates again to 2021, when Ghana sought further vaccine provides in the course of the international scramble for COVID-19 immunisations. Although the nation had begun administering vaccines obtained by the COVAX facility and bilateral agreements, authorities officers pursued additional doses to velocity up the nationwide vaccination marketing campaign.
As a part of that effort, the then Health Minister Agyemang-Manu entered into an settlement involving a United Arab Emirates middleman, Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, along with a Ghanaian agency, S.L. Global, to provide thousands and thousands of doses of the Russian-developed vaccine.
The deal quickly triggered widespread criticism after it emerged that Ghana had agreed to buy the vaccines by the middleman at about $19 per dose, nearly double the estimated $10 worth at which the producer was reportedly providing the vaccines.
An advert hoc committee of the Parliament of Ghana later decided that the agreements had been executed with out the mandatory parliamentary approval and with out authorisation from the Public Procurement Authority (Ghana).
The committee additional revealed that roughly $2.85 million, equal to greater than GH¢16 million, had already been paid as a part of the transaction despite the fact that the vaccines had been by no means delivered.
In the face of mounting public strain and parliamentary scrutiny, the federal government cancelled the deal in July 2021, bringing an finish to the disputed procurement association.
Separate considerations had been additionally raised concerning the authorities’s contract with Frontiers Healthcare Services to conduct necessary COVID-19 testing for arriving passengers on the Kotoka International Airport. Investigations indicated that whereas Ghana earned about $6.4 million from the association, the personal operator obtained roughly $80.6 million from the testing providers.
