Police Mafia Exposed

*Huge extortion in UN operations

By William Beeko

Reliable information stumbled upon by TODAY from highly placed sources indicates that the United Nations (UN) Peace Keeping Operations abroad has become a hot business for big-wigs and top ranking officers of the Ghana Police Service.

TODAY’s investigations uncovered that top officers in the nation’s premier security agency are using the UN Peace Mission initiative to suit their selfish whims and to enrich themselves.

This reporter learnt that these officers take cash from colleague officers who apply for the Peace Keeping Operations before they are permitted to execute the mission.

It was further gathered that under certain circumstances, cash is not only taken but an officer pays back when he returns from the mission or is forced to share the wealth accrued from the mission with the top official who pushed him through.

Some victims of this corrupt practice, who spoke to this paper on very strict conditions of anonymity, decried the situation and expressed their discontentment at this greedy act.

The police officers told TODAY that even after meeting these criteria one has to pay cash to some greedy-headed ruthless top official some where along the line.

“I had to pay GHC 1,000 (Thousand Ghana Cedis) to some officer somewhere before I could sail through my Peace Keeping Mission in Sudan about two years ago,” one of the concerned and aggrieved officers told this paper.

Another officer could not hide his story and had this to tell TODAY, “my Senior Inspector asked me to pay an amount of GHC1, 200 (One thousand two hundred Ghana Cedis) after going through the usual scrutiny exercise associated with the UN standards,” he said, adding that “this thing has gone on for years and I wonder what steps the Government would take to curtail the situation.”

“I also paid an amount of GHC1, 500 (One thousand five hundred Ghana Cedis) on my mission to DR. Congo in the year 2007 after going through the procedures,” another officer lamented.

Over the past years, the UN Peace Keeping Operations have evolved to meet the demands of different conflicts and a changing political landscape.

Born at the time when the cold war rivalries frequently paralyzed the Security Council, the UN Peace Keeping goals were primarily limited to maintaining ceasefires and stabilizing situations on the ground so that efforts could be made at the political level to resolve the conflict by peaceful means.

It is in this vein that Military officers and Police officers have been deployed annually to conflict prone countries in the world as an effort to maintain peace and tranquility.