Contracts for Sale: AB Adjei and brother-in-law granted ¢10 million bail
Adjenim Boateng Adjei was busted in the "Contracts for Sale" investigations for owning a private company that won and sold government contracts while he was the CEO of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA)
Adjenim Boateng Adjei’s sunrise yellow kaftan shone like righteousness in a courtroom accustomed to dark suits.
His case is bright too, his lawyer, Kwame Acheampong Boateng, expressed confidence that the Special Prosecutor’s criminal charges against his client would fail.
Bored by a case yet to start, the former CEO of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) hung his head and crashed his gaze into his only companion there—his mobile phone.
At about 9:20 am, a clerk intoned, “Court rise!” Her Ladyship Mary Maame Ekue Nsenkyire walked in. A slender, bespectacled judge with two wigs, a white judicial wig that tamed a beautiful wig that flowed on either side within touching distance of her shoulders.
She immediately noticed the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng.
“How are you doing? I have not had the opportunity to congratulate you on your appointment,” she said.
Kissi Agyebeng rose to introduce himself, mentioning he was the Special Prosecutor, with an exalted emphasis on “special” much the same way, Special Ice mineral water is pronounced in those TV commercials.
“I have also not had the opportunity to do same,” Kissi Agyebeng referred to his inability to congratulate the judge on her rise to the High Court in 2019, from the Circuit Court in Kumasi, where she was nearly assaulted by marauding Delta Force members in April 2017.
Just two months after that incident, A.B Adjei and his brother-in-law, Francis Kwaku Arhin, formed Talent Discovery Limited. AB Adjei had just been reappointed into office as the CEO of the PPA, an office he headed when it was first created by the President Kufuor administration.
Talent Discovery Limited, in the words of the Special Prosecutor, was “their sure bet of winning public contracts in a disingenuous and unlawful design.”
The company was a vehicle of corruption and AB Adjei’s retirement plan when he exited the PPA, Kissi Agyebeng told the court. He was to join his brother-in-law at the company after retirement and “share the spoils.”
At 63 years, AB Adjei is now home. But that has not been according to the original plan because he was also in court. This was all because he perhaps did not factor in one question: “What would happen if an investigative journalist like Manasseh Azure Awuni shows up in my office to ask who owns Talent Discovery Ltd?”
Now, standing in an open-top wooden cage already half his height, AB Adjei was listening to a court clerk read to his hearing, eight counts of using public office for profit and nine counts of directly and indirectly influencing the procurement process to obtain an unfair advantage in the award of a procurement contract.
“…the Chief Executive Officer of Public Procurement Authority and a member of the Governing Board of Public Procurement Authority, corruptly abused the office for private profit and benefit by improperly and unlawfully influencing the outcome of the public procurement process by conducting the procurement process and actively participating in the decision-making process in respect of a public works contract awarded by the Ministry of Education…for the construction of a dormitory block at Collins Senior High School in the Asante Akyem North District in the Ashanti Region through restricted tendering unfairly in favour of Talent Discovery Limited, without disclosing your interest as the majority shareholder and a Director of Talent Discovery Limited, and thereby obtaining a corrupt pecuniary benefit,” the clerk read the particulars of the offence from the charge sheet.
“How do you plead?” the clerk continued.
“Not guilty,” a refrain he repeated after the near monotonous reading of the charges that lasted 22 minutes. After that, he sank into the cage that swallowed his height.
When his lawyer, Kwame Acheampong Boateng, stood up to address the court, he paid no attention to the special prosecutor’s confident accusations and story-telling monologue of how AB Adjei had made “fantastic” money in a “very short time” as the PPA CEO.
There was going to be time for that, he told The Fourth Estate reporter. Now, he was just interested in getting bail for his client.
The lawyer argued there is no way AB Adjei would run out of the jurisdiction because he was a “man of means”, a claim the Special Prosecutor privy to, the millions in the accused’s account.
He had several businesses running and had cooperated with investigations, the lawyer said as he asked for a self-reconnaissance bail.
The lawyer for AB Adjei’s brother-in-law also asked for b
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