RE: A bit of news21 Jun 2018 14:31
Where did all the money go?
A lot of money was coming out of GDC for unclear services. Other internal documents of the gas company reveal that in April 2016, BlackWood General Trading LLC, a company associated with Ahmed Dik, received from GDC approximately $1,370,000 (XAF 774 million ) for the supply of pipes of various diameters used in the extension of the natural gas pipeline. Akoa said the prices of this company based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates were three times higher than those of the Ghanaian and Indian companies that supplied this type of pipe to GDC.
GDC’s supply chain has expanded to South Africa. Between August 2014 and November 2016, the
Eric and Heilie Friend
VOG subsidiary spent 397,088 rand (XAF16.5 million) for the purchase of shirts, boots, caps and seat belts from A-Call-Away (ACA), a South African plumbing and electricity company headed by Heilie Friend, the wife of Eric Friend, the current Managing Director of GDC. The same internal financial documents reveal that GDC paid in the same period the sum of 184,553 rands (XAF7.7 million) to Contractors Equipment Store (CES), another South African company based in Cape Town as ACA, for the provision of costumes, coats and safety shoes. In these two markets, the representative of ACA and CES is Ruhan Lombard, director of CES and brother of Heilie Friend, the wife of Eric Friend.
GDC was making these expensive purchases at a time when about thirty of its Cameroonian employees had been fired on the grounds that the gas company wanted to reduce costs. Another employee currently in court against his former employer for unfair dismissal says he discovered that his signature was forged. Dismissed on September 26, 2017 after an accident with a GDC car, Eric Fokam dragged his employer to court for unfair dismissal. The former driver said the defense presented at a court hearing an alcohol test report he allegedly underwent after the accident. “I did not do any alcohol tests after the accident,” Fokam said in an interview. “They wanted to imitate my signature to give credibility to the false document; I cannot let that happen. ”
Eric Friend did not comment on allegations made by former staff members. However, some VOG shareholders informed of the allegations, including GDC’s former chief executive, Jonathan Scott Barrett, demanded an independent investigation to “produce enough evidence for all executives to be immediately dismissed and without any chance of waiting for a long disruptive investigation,” Scott Barrett said in an internal email.
After some hesitation, the VOG Audit Committee selected Price ********** Coopers Nigeria to hear Akoa’s allegations and conduct an internal audit of GDC. VOG later warned investors in an email that after reviewing the report, the audit committee would select the information to share with shareholders and authorities. The former GDC project controller said he was heard in