Illegal voter transfer claim serious - Kofi Bentil

Private legal practitioner Kofi Bentil has called for thorough investigations into allegations against Deputy Chair of the Electoral Commission, Amadu Sulley regarding his alleged involvement in illegal voter transfers.

Chair of the commission, Mrs Charlotte Oseifor, responding to a petition filed against her by some concerned workers at the EC noted that: “The Deputy Chairperson Operations [Amadu Sulley] collected funds above GHS6m (Six million Ghana cedis) in cash from some political parties for the organisation of party primaries without recourse to the structures of the Commission, and without the involvement of the finance department of the Commission. Political party primaries were treated as a private commercial project by the Deputy Chairperson Ops, with funds paid directly into the personal accounts of key staff for functions to be performed for party primaries.

“The Deputy Chairperson Operations has persistently instructed officials to carry out illegal vote transfers on the Voter management System in clear breach of the law and operational policies of the Commission. Such actions have major implications for the integrity of the work of the Commission and constitute abuse of office.”

Commenting on this development on Accra-based Joy FM on Monday July 24, Mr Bentil said the matter was a very serious allegation which bordered on “criminality” thus needed thorough investigations.

He said: “I believe that Madam Charlotte [Osei] is able to say these things because she is in there but before she got there was this going on and for how long has this been going on?

“When I talk about operations of the EC, I am talking about technical people, be they IT people or elections operations people going in to verify that the EC is going by its proper operational guidelines in the law. That is separate from the financial audit that makes sure that the EC is spending public money well.”

“Maybe Mr Sulley has taken liberty because over the years there was no system that tells them to account and that is why he has gone on and done some of the things, these are allegations anyway. So yes it is extremely worrying and we should get to the bottom of this frankly and very quickly.”

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