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Fraud Squad officer cross-examined in former WAAPP coordinator’s trial

Nov 27, 2014, 10:08 AM

Fraud Squad Officer, Essa Sowe, was Wednesday cross-examined by defence counsel, E .Singhateh, in the criminal trial involving former WAAPP coordinator, Sheikh Tijan Sosseh, before Justice Amadi of the Special criminal Court.

Under cross-examination, the witness said he read all the documents they came across during the investigation.

He said he could not remember coming across any document, which was the implementation, and completion result report of the World Bank. The witness added that he could not also remember reading any document from the World Bank stating that the implementation of the project was satisfactory. He could not also remember reading the impact evaluation report on the GEAP Project, adding that he has no idea about an international agricultural consultant who commented on the project.

He said that during the investigation they had never come across any document that said that the GEAP Project had been completed.

He was aware that all projects were approved by donors before implementation, but he had no idea that the balance of €5.3 million which has not been utilised during the implementation of the project had to be approved by the donors before utilizing them in other expenditures.

He said the balance which was not utilised was approved by the donors and paid into the project account.

They never came across a letter from the PS at the Ministry of Agriculture to the donors, seeking permission to utilize the balance on additional equipment and farming inputs, which were refused by the donors.

He said their investigations were complete, and denied that the accused had fully implemented the project satisfactory.

The case continues.