Ghanaian business mogul, Sir Sam Jonah, has praised President John Dramani Mahama for the implementation of the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) anti-corruption initiative.
Speaking in a recent interview on Starr FM, Sam Jonah asserted that he was 100 percent behind the initiative because he believes it would help stop the numerous corruption scandals that were seen in the previous government.
He indicated that ORAL would help ensure transparency and accountability in public office, which he said would stop what he described as “foolishness” and “impunity” in public office.
“The signs are good. There is a refreshing wind of change that is going through the country. An important first step was the ORAL. One hopes that they would have the courage to see it through.
“It is an inconvenient truth to say that ORAL should not be pursued because there must be accountability, there must be transparency,” he said.
Sam Jonah added, “So, to the extent that he has publicly made that one of his commitments to ensuring that there is accountability — not just with the previous government but even with his government. We hope that important lessons have been learnt, that some of the foolishness that we saw would not continue, that the culture of impunity would not continue.”
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Meanwhile, former Auditor-General Daniel Yao Domelevo, who was a member of the ORAL preparatory committee, which compiled the corruption cases under the initiative, has admitted that the team collected and compiled data without verification — including entries he described as “garbage.”
He noted that the estimated $21 billion expected to be recovered under ORAL is not likely to happen because the committee was limited to gathering complaints and documentation submitted by the public, without conducting any investigations to confirm their validity.
“I completely agree,” he said, responding to comments by the Deputy Attorney General that the estimated $21 billion expected to be recovered under ORAL was exaggerated.
“I remember I had an interview with you earlier, and I said that those figures are just a summation of the complaints which came. And I even said that after an audit or investigation, those figures may balloon further or may shrink. It is possible,” he added.
BAI/AE
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