SSNIT Hotels sale: Prosecute me if you find a trace of corruption – SSNIT Board Chair

The Board Chairperson  of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Elizabeth Ohene, has said that due process was followed in the selection of Rock City to acquire a 60% stake of the four hotels under the management of SSNIT.

She emphasised that as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of SSNIT, she would gladly accept to be prosecuted if a scintilla of corruption can be inferred from the contact between Agric Minister Bryan Acheampong’s Rock City and SSNIT.

Ms Ohene berated Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa – the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, who broke the news of the deal to the public and has vehemently kicked against it – for behaving as if he knew better than the Board of Trustees who diligently applied all the rules in selecting Rock City for the deal.

“I am able to say with the utmost certainty that the process that led to the selection of Rock City as the Preferred Bidder was clean, above board and met every rule and regulation and can withstand every scrutiny…Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa claims to have God and Ghana on the side of his campaign, and I would hope all of God’s Angels and Ghana’s investigative agencies, temporal and spiritual, would examine the process and tell the world if they find any irregularity or trace of corrupt practice. Indeed, if they should find any evidence of corruption, I will assume and accept responsibility and expect to be prosecuted,” she wrote in an article titled “Coming out of Hotels”, which addressed the raging controversy.

 She continued: “Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa appears to know something I don’t. The Board of Trustees certainly did not go to get permission or even inform the President of the Republic or any Minister about the decision to seek a strategic investor to take a stake in the hotels.

The Board did not need such permission, was not obliged to inform the government and did not do so. I have seen no evidence in the records of past Boards going to the government or the President to get permission to make an investment decision.

The Board did not involve the President, nor the Minister, nor the government in the process. The Act that governs SSNIT makes no such provision and I had thought it was in everyone’s interest that the pension fund is kept away from government interference.”

Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa, who had earlier petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice(CHRAJ) to look into the deal, led a demonstration against it. But Ms Ohene contended that Mr Ablakwa was out of order in petitioning the Presidency on the matter.

“Obviously, a demonstration is more sexy when it ends at Jubilee House, but I assure the Honourable Member for North Tongu he was out by a long shot,” she asserted.

News of Bryan Acheampong’s Rock City seeking to acquire four SSNIT Hotels has sparked much controversy for the past several weeks.

Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa has argued that Bryan Acheampong’s Rock City did not follow the laid down procedure, such as seeking clearance from the Speaker of Parliament given that he is an MP, and is in a conflict of interest situation. But Mr Acheampong has defended the deal, saying nothing untoward happened.

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