Special Prosecutor to investigate loan diverted to fund NDC research
Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu has requested for further evidence after JoyNews investigations revealed loans were diverted to fund political research.
His office is likely to open preliminary investigations into the issue after studying the evidence to be supplied by JoyNews in the next 24 hours.
JoyNews investigations uncovered how part of a 175 million dollar loan contracted to build seven hospitals in Ghana was diverted into the research.
The research details a discreet work on political and health survey by UK-based SCL Social, the mother company of Cambridge Analytica (CA).
CA, a data analytics firm used personal information harvested from more than 50 million Facebook profiles without permission to build a system that could target US voters with personalised political advertisements based on their psychological profile.
But in Ghana, its other company SCL Social was contracted by the Health Ministry under the Mahama administration to ‘test the attitudes and perceptions of the population towards contemporary issues faced in Ghana…’
The company was paid six million dollars for its a sub-contracted work under a 175 million dollar project awarded to British infrastructure company NMS for the construction of seven district hospitals and an integrated IT system.
The exact wording of the contract: “The work consists of two discrete political and public health elements”.
Rojo Mettle-Nunoo, who was an administrator of the Mahama campaign team admitted knowing SCL Social and confirmed crucial campaign intelligence was gathered through a research.
But he has declined comment about whether the work done by SCL Social is the same research presented to the NDC.
He has said the work was disregarded by the party. But the Special Prosecutor has signalled it is not ready to disregard the story anytime soon.
Martin Amidu wants to run investigations into the use of public funds for partisan ends.
Source: Myjoyonline.com
