Associate Editor at The Fourth Estate, Seth Bokpe, has dismissed the explanations given by former Director-General of the National Lottery Authority (NLA), Sammy Awuku, regarding the use of funds from the Good Causes Foundation.

Speaking on The Pulse on JoyNews on Friday, September 26, Mr Bokpe described Mr Awuku’s defence as belated and inconsistent with the law.

“I think it’s basically an afterthought. I mean, the excuses he’s giving are an afterthought because when we approached him for his side of the story, he told us that what he has done is to put the NLA’s Good Causes Foundation in a state that can help society.

"But if you look at some of the expenses they made for this Good Causes Foundation, it does not in any way comply with what the law says,” Mr Bokpe said.

He questioned how certain expenditures could be justified as benefiting the poor and vulnerable, as the Foundation is mandated to do.

“How do you spend money on Accra in Paris, for instance? Somebody travels to Paris for a musical concert, and it inures to the benefit of the poor or destitute or an orphanage in Osu or the Kumasi orphanage? How do you justify spending GH₵2 million on an astroturf in his constituency?

"How does that inure to the poor child or the mentally afflicted? How about the GH₵200,000 that the Good Causes Foundation said it spent on a police post at the Supreme Court? How does that inure to the benefits of the poor child?” he asked.