ACCRA, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Ghana's foreign ministry on Tuesday announced that the country's embassy in Washington, D.C. will reopen on Thursday after a temporary closure.
The announcement came after Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa ordered the closure on Monday to allow for investigations into alleged corrupt practices at the mission.
A team of astute diplomats from the foreign ministry has been dispatched to the embassy to ensure a total system overhaul, restore credibility to the embassy's operations, and complete ongoing structural reform, the statement said.
According to the ministry, a special audit team found that a local staffer in the embassy's IT department created an unauthorized link on the embassy's website, which diverted visa and passport applicants to his company, where he charged extra for multiple services on the blind side of the ministry and kept the entire proceeds in his private account.
"An IT team has already been deployed to reconfigure the website and payment platforms to do away with all unofficial and unauthorized links associated with the IT system of the embassy," the statement added. ■
