From GhanaWeb

The European Union is withholding a £135 million budget support to Ghana due to an alleged payroll corruption scandal it is investigating.

According to a top British newspaper, Sunday Times, published in London on Sunday, the EU anti-fraud agency is probing a mam­moth corruption scandal running into several million pounds in Ghana, being aid package from the EU to support the country’s budg­et among others.

The money is said to have found its way into the pockets of ‘ghost workers’ in government.

Managers of the fund releasing unit of the EU have been charged for as the newspaper put it, covering up the scandal after the Ghanaian government experienced major chal­lenges with its budget and the late knowledge about the extent of the scandal.

Details of the report suggest that “tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of fictitious state employees were kept on Ghana’s pub­lic payroll partly financed by the EU and Britain.”

With limitations on how to establish the veracity of the allegations, the British and EU authorities are depending on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to undertake the task through a scrutiny of the country’s budget among other channels.

A senior IMF official is quoted by the newspaper as asking rhetorically, “Is there a massive fraud involving foreign aid fund? We will not be able to know the extent of it until a thorough reform has taken place; but it is apparent that the huge increase in the public pay­roll is the main reason for the growing deficit.”

The increase in the pub­lic payroll was noted in the wake of the addition of rul­ing party activists on the public sector workers’ list through various state agen­cies such as the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), a countrywide phenomenon which came under the pub­lic radar.

The opposition outcry was though unable to have government rescind its deci­sion of creating salary earn­ing channels for some non­existent staffers.

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