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Two staff members stationed at the Electoral Commission Headquarters in Accra, Benjamin Fienyi, a security officer and Joseph Blankson Adumadzie, database administrator are among the four suspects charged for allegedly stealing voting devices.
The remaining suspects are Philip Tettey, a laborer and resident of Dansoman Last Stop and Clifford Yeboah, a student who resides at Manet.
They have been remanded into police custody by the Dansoman Circuit Court, presided over by Halima Abdul El-Lawal Basit.
This was after they pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, stealing and dishonestly receiving some HP and Dell laptops from the EC.
The prosecutor, Chief Inspector Christopher Wonder prayed the court to hold the suspects as their presenceaat post will interfere in their investigations
Facts
The police prosecutor, Chief Inspector Christopher Wonder narrating the case to the court said the complainant in the case is the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC), the first accused person Philip Tettey is a laborer and resident of Dansoman last stop, the second accused person Benjamin Fienyi is a security man and lives at Odorkor, the third accused is Joseph Blankson Adumadzie is a database Administrator and resides at Oyarifa and the fourth accused is a student, Clifford Yeboah and resides at Manet.
Chief Inspector Wonder said, on March 9, 2024, officers from the ICT Department of the Electoral Commission began conducting routine maintenance on the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) Kits. He said each of the kit box contained a laptop computer, printer, a scanner, battery and biometric device.
During the maintenance, the officials detected that five of the Dell laptop computers had been stolen from the kit boxes.
He told the court that a complaint was lodged with the National Security and in the course of the investigation, all accused persons were arrested and during investigations, three HP laptop computers, which value are not yet known, were retrieved from Clifford Yeboah.
Also, one HP printer and three Biometric Verification Device (BDV) printer chargers were retrieved from Benjamin Fenyi. He said all retrieved items are properties of the Electoral Commission of Ghana.
Chief Inspector Wonder said investigations so far revealed that, in Mrach 2023, the Commission engaged casual workers and security men to remove some of their materials from the warehouse at the Commission’s old Head office at Ridge to one of their warehouses at Spintex.
It was during that time that Benjamin Fienyi and Joseph Blankson allegedly planned to steal some of the printers.
He told the court in furtherance of their plan, Joseph Blankson stole the HP printer from one of the kit boxes and handed it to Fienyi.
Fienyi also stole three Biometric Verification Device (BDV) printer chargers and sent it home.
Philip Tettey, on the other hand, stole three HP laptop computers from the kit boxes and gave same to Clifford Yeboah to keep one and repair the remaining two for him.
The case has been adjourned to April 29, 2024.
The court also directed the prosecution to file all disclosures for case management to commence on the next date.
