A former Board Secretary of the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF), Kofi Boakye, has told the court that the GIIF Board never approved the SkyTrain project nor sanctioned a $2 million payment linked to it.
Mr. Boakye, a lawyer by profession and the second prosecution witness, gave his evidence-in-chief on Tuesday, February 11, which was adopted by the court in the ongoing trial involving former GIIF Chief Executive Officer Solomon Asamoah and former Board Chairman Prof. Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi.
The two have been charged with conspiring to cause a financial loss of $2 million to the state in relation to the proposed SkyTrain system, which was never constructed.
In his testimony, Mr. Boakye stated that during his time on the Board, several projects were considered and approved by GIIF. However, he was categorical that the SkyTrain project was not among those approved.
He further told the court that the Board also did not authorise the payment of $2 million for the acquisition of shares connected to the SkyTrain initiative.
According to the witness, the SkyTrain issue was first brought to the Board’s attention when Mr. Asamoah informed members that he had travelled to South Africa as part of a government delegation to attend an investment summit. At that forum, a group made presentations on the SkyTrain project.
Mr. Boakye said Mr. Asamoah later told the Board that the delegation which attended the Annual Investment Forum in South Africa had taken a decision for GIIF to participate in the project.
He added that the Board expressed interest in the initiative, following which a presentation was made to the Investment and Financing Committee of GIIF.
Despite these developments, the witness maintained that no formal approval was granted by the Board for the SkyTrain project or for the payment of $2 million associated with it.
During cross-examination by counsel for Mr. Asamoah, Victoria Barh, the witness was confronted with suggestions that his later explanations to a successor Company Secretary may have influenced how certain board documents were interpreted. It was put to him that the new secretary and a Chief Accountant had understood portions of an existing document to mean that the Board had approved the SkyTrain project.
In response, Mr. Boakye told the court that he consistently made it clear to the incoming secretary that the SkyTrain project had never received Board approval.
He explained that when the secretary drew his attention to a particular statement in the document, his position was that the wording did not amount to an approval.
He further testified that the Chief Executive Officer had, at a point, referred to that memo as a record of Board approval for the SkyTrain project, an issue that arose when GIIF’s management appeared before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.
Counsel for the defence suggested that the witness had added details in his testimony that were not part of his earlier account, particularly regarding what the new secretary told him.
Mr. Boakye rejected that suggestion, stating that he was merely responding fully to the questions posed and clarifying the factual circumstances surrounding the matter.
When it was further put to him that no conversation ever took place in which the new secretary said the CEO had relied on the minutes of October 24, 2018, as evidence of Board approval, the witness disagreed.
He told the court that, in his presence and in the presence of other members, Mr. Asamoah had insisted that the minutes of that meeting constituted proof of Board approval for the SkyTrain project, even arguing over punctuation in the relevant paragraph.
