By Saio Marrah
Magistrate Mark Ngegba of the Pademba Road Court has committed a National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) survivor benefit fraud case for trial in the High Court. He said there was sufficient evidence to try 46 year old Aloysius Borbor Barber in the High Court, rejecting an application by defence lawyer John JG Williams for the case to be dismissed.
Lawyer Williams, applied for the dismissal of the case on the grounds that the accused had already repaid an amount of seven thousand new Leones) to NASSIT, the total amount of money, which he said his client collected from the social security trust.
Before his application, a staff of the Customer Service Department of NASSIT, Mabinty Kargbo told the court that between 15th July 2019 and 23rd February 2021, she was at work at the Wallace Johnson Street regional office in Freetown when a customer service officer, Aminata Dainkeh came to her office saying that the accused wanted to talk to her.
The witness further testified that she interviewed the accused and the accused told her he was a survivor pensioner of his late wife, Amie Mary Tua, but that the pension money had stopped running. “I looked at him and asked, are you sure the deceased was your wife? He smiled and said yes”. She also told the court that he later said: “actually the deceased was my mother”. She also noted that the accused was even over age to collect a survivor pension and that the husband of the deceased woman had died as well, but he was collecting the pension payment.
The witness said she later applied for the marriage certificate of the deceased and realized the accused forged the marriage document and that it was at that point that she reported the case to her boss.
Under cross examination, the witness admitted that the accused confessed that the deceased was his mother and not his spouse. Lawyer Williams suggested that there should be a body within NASSIT to serve as a tribunal to address the issue instead of bringing it to court.
The accused was being investigated for 84 counts ranging from conspiracy to defraud, forgery, making false statements and causing money to be paid by false pretense.
The court learned that between the 15th of July 2019 and 23rd of February 2021, the accused conspired with other people at Bo City to defraud NASSIT and obtained survivors' benefits by forging a certificate of native marriage.
He is also accused of forging one certificate of native marriage with general receipt number 61272/09, purporting that Bo District Council prepared it.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (31/05/23)
