Philip Akpeena Assibit—the first accused person in the GH¢4.1 million GYEEDA rot case has described his conviction as wrong, vowing to appeal it.
An Accra High Court Friday February 23 sentenced Mr. Assibit, a representative of Goodwill International Ghana (GIG) and a former national Coordinator of GYEEDA Abuga Pele to 12 and 6 years jail terms respectively for causing financial loss to the state.
The court presided over by Justice Afua Serwaa Asare Botwe found both accused persons guilty of all the nineteen counts leveled against them by the prosecution.
But speaking to Starr Today’s Atiewin Mbillah-Lawson, Mr. Assibit’s lawyer, Kweku Paintsil dismissed the conviction as “shocking” and “wrong.”
“… [It is] wrong because on the totality of the evidence that came before the court, we think the accused [first accused person] led more than sufficient evidence to lead to an acquittal,” he argued.
His client, he said had already instructed him to challenge the conviction at the Appeals Court and that would be carried out next week.
“As for judgment when you are not happy you appeal,” said Mr. Paintsil and “that’s exactly our instruction.”
“The instruction we receive is to appeal and obviously when we get the judgment we will study it in full. But I can tell you that the appeal is coming up next week; possibly anytime by this time next week we would have filed our appeal. That is quite certain,” he stressed.
Background
The facts of the case, as presented by Mrs Keelson, were that in 2009, Pele, on assumption of office as the National Co-ordinator of the NYEP, entered into a contract with Assibit.
Under the terms of the agreement, the NYEP was described as the ‘host’, while the GIG was tagged as the ‘strategic partner’.
According to the prosecution, the parties agreed to combine their labour, properties and skills for the purpose of engaging in resource mobilisation, investor sourcing, management consulting, capacity building, career development, training services, among other jobs.
Per the agreement, the GIG was responsible for resource mobilisation and undertook to provide preliminary funds for the development of the programme, while the parties agreed to equally share the profits that would accrue out of the agreement.
“Meanwhile, there is nothing on record in terms of business proposals or documents forming the basis of engaging the GIG as a strategic partner,” the prosecution stated.
Mr. Assibit, between May 2011 and May 2012, “made a number of payment claims for consultancy services he claimed to have rendered to the NYEP, ranging from the provision of exit plan and strategy for all NYEP modules, established a Youth Enterprise Development Project which he claimed to have used in securing approval for a World Bank facility of $65 million for the NYEP and had recruited and trained 250 youth to support the implementation of what he referred to as the World Bank-funded Youth Enterprise Development Programme (YEDP),” it said.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
