The accused are Muhammadou Lamin Jaiteh, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Health, Balla Kandeh, programme manager of the Malaria Control Programme, and Omar Malleh Ceesay, executive director of the Health Promotion and Development Organisation.
They were charged with theft, forgery, economic crime, disobedience of statutory duty, official corruption, and conspiracy to commit felony.
The witness, Sheriff S. Corr, a police investigator at the fraud squad, revealed that apart from study reports, Curricula Vitae (CVs) and contract documents of consultants, they also recovered documents that were between Global Fund and the Ministry of Health and between the Ministry of Finance and Global Fund.
He further revealed that they recovered retirement documents from the second accused, Omar Malleh Ceesay, indicating how much that was exposed on conducting the four studies.
During the course of the investigation, the witness said they invited two consultants, Mohammadou Sissoko and Basiru Phillot, and they later found out that one of the consultants, Mamout Ceesay, had passed away and that they could not trace Abou Sallah during the course of the investigation.
The witness further explained that during the interaction with the two consultants, they informed the investigators that they were brought on board by one Lamin Jarju who was the deputy programme manager at the National Malaria Control Programme.
He said they confronted the two consultants on the issue of consultancy per-diem stated in the retirement documents which indicated that per diem was paid to them for conducting the said studies.
He told the court that the consultants responded that they had no idea about those payments or amounts. “So, we went on a nationwide fact finding in all the regions to confirm whether some of the names we have in those documents are the people who took part in the studies,” he narrated
“In all the regions we went to,” he said they were able to meet some of the participants who confirmed to have taken part in the said studies and confirmed to have received the amount against their names.
Mr Corr further explained that the consultants were confronted on whether they knew the three accused persons, and they replied that they did not know them.
“Having interacted with the two consultants, the participants who took part in the studies, witness statements were obtained from all of them,” Mr Corr the witness stated.
The witness further said that the retirement documents indicated the amount to have been paid to all the four consultants, but the two consultants who were invited at the police unit denied receiving those monies.
Accumulating all of these amounts, the witness explained, was four million and above, together with the 3% obtained by HePDO, which was equivalent to “D266,000 as administrative upkeep”.
He revealed that the four million was recovered from HePDO and deposited it to the Central Bank treasury account.
Corr PW3 explained that before the investigation report was made, he recalled guiding the second accused person in recording his cautionary statement which he wrote willingly, adding that after all was done, the investigation report was rounded up.
