Court remands 3 EC staff, 1 student for stealing laptops, BVDs

An Accra High Court has remanded 3 staff of the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) and 1 student for stealing laptops and Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs).

The four were remanded after a hearing on Wednesday, April 17, 2024.

It would be recalled that on Tuesday, March 19, Minority Leader Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson indicated that the EC confirmed that the missing seven BVDs cannot be identified.

The Minority Leader has since called on the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service and other security agencies to “immediately issue a statement giving us the details of their investigations so far,” adding, “I am concerned and worried because that devices in the hands of an unknown person can compromise the future elections”.

But addressing the press in Accra on Wednesday, March 20, a Deputy Commissioner at the EC, Dr. Bossman Asare, said, “These allegations are not true. No BVD has been stolen. To set the records straight, the Commission recently undertook routine servicing of its Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) Kits.

“It was during this maintenance that we discovered the theft of five (5) laptops from the Biometric Voter Registration kits, not seven BVDs as erroneously stated.

“For clarification, Biometric Voter Registration Kits, which comprise a laptop, camera, scanner, and printer, are entirely separate from the Commission’s Registration Data Systems and are incapable of manipulating election outcomes as suggested,” said Dr. Asare.

More soon…