Witness reveals 2 consultants received D1M each as payment

The witness, Amadou Badjie, said he issued cheques to Abdou Sallah and Muhammed Sissoko whose names were part of the lists of consultants in the health corruption case.

He added that those cheques were from HePDO and also because the two were employed as consultants for the study related to malaria. He cited another consultant, Mamud Ceesay, who he said was familiar with but had never met. He told the court that he met Basirou Phillot once at the police station with Muhammed Sissoko.

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 (HePDO).

The witness further testified that between 2018 and 2020, he was aware of cash inflow into the HePDO project account with Access Bank. He said there was information of cash from the Project Coordinating Unit of the Ministry of Health, adding that the total amount was D11, 480, 023. 04.

The witness further stated that HePDO as an organisation has various bank accounts in the country including Ecobank, Access Bank and BSIC Bank.

He stated that HePDO maintained two accounts with Access Bank with Omar Malleh Ceesay (2nd accused), Balla Kandeh (1st accused), Fanta Jatta-Sowe, Lamin Manneh, Amadou Badjie (PW6) and Fatou Bittaye as and the signatories.

He said one of the accounts was a general account and the other was a project account where they normally put in funds when they got funding from donors.

Asked if the signatories he mentioned earlier, are the same people who were signatories to the project account, the witness said the signatories to the project account were Omar Malleh Ceesay (2ndd accused) and the executive director at the time, Balla Kandeh (1st accused) and board chair of HePDO, Lamin Manneh and Fanta Jatta-Sowe who he said was a board member.

The case continues today.