– The Dansoman Circuit Court has remanded into police custody three Electoral Commission (EC) workers and a student accused of stealing laptops and Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits of the Commission.
Philip Tetteh, a Labourer, Benjamin Fienyi, a security man, and Jospeh Blankson Adamadze, a database Administrator, have been jointly charged with conspiracy to steal and stealing.
Clifford Yeboah, a 23-year-old student, have been charged with dishonestly receiving,
All the four accused persons have denied the various charges before the court presided over by Halima Abdul El Lawal Basit, the trial judge.
Chief Inspector Christopher Wonder, the prosecutor, told the court that the matter was still under investigations and that accused persons would interfere if admitted to bail.
According to the prosecutor, the Police were yet to retrieve the laptops which contained crucial information.
The court therefore remanded the accused persons until April 29, 2024
Earlier, prosecution narrated to the court that the complainant’s was the EC officials.
Prosecution said on March 9, this year, officials from the Commission (Information Technology Department) commenced with regular maintenance of its BVR kits.
According to prosecution, each BVR kit had a laptop computer, scanner, printer, biometric device, and a battery.
The court heard that during the exercise, it was detected that those five dell laptops belonging to the EC had been stolen among the set of kits.
Prosecution said a report was made to the National Security and intelligence led to the arrest of the accused persons.
The prosecutor told the court that three HP laptops of the EC were retrieved from Yeboah and a HP printer and three Biometric Verification Device (BVD) on Fienyi,
Prosecution told the court that Fienyi and Adamadze planned to steal some of the printers when the commission in March 2023 engaged its casual workers and security men to remove some materials from the commission’s warehouse at Ridge (EC old Head office) to one of its warehouses in Accra.
Investigations revealed that Philip Tetteh stole three HP laptops from the kit boxes and gave same to Yeboah to keep and repair them.
In the case of Blankson, he stole the HP Printer from the kits and gave it Fienyi. Fienyi also took three BVD printer chargers and sent them home.
GNA
SOF
17 April 2024
