President John Mahama, as vice president,
diverted into private pockets, an amount of $13million which local oil firm E.O.
Group agreed to pay to the government of Ghana for the development of the
Western Region as part of the Group’s “corporate social responsibility” and as a
condition precedent to President John Mills’ signing of the executive consent to
permit the Group to assign its $300million shares to Tullow Oil, former Attorney
General Martin Amidu has revealed.
In a long article to adduce evidence
about Mr Mahama’s corrupt tendencies, Mr Amidu said instead of having the
$13million paid to the state, Mr Mahama, as vice president, ordered that the
money be paid into “private pockets.”
“John Mahama is not a newcomer to
the corrupt practice of aiding the looting of the public purse. As a condition
for President Mills signing the controversial executive consent to permit the
E.O. Group to assign its $300million shares to Tullow, the E.O. Group agreed to
pay $13million to the Government for the development of the Western Region, and
they called it corporate social responsibility.
“It was John Mahama (as
the Vice President) who orchestrated the unlawful deal which I refused to
endorse as the Attorney General at the time. It was Mahama who ensured that the
$13million was paid not to the Government of Ghana for the benefit of the
people, but into private pockets – which the late President Mills was shocked to
hear shortly before his death.
“So what is the talk of anti-corruption by
this incumbent President Mahama? During his tenure, Ben Kumbour who succeeded me
as Attorney General refused to give the indemnity that was demanded from me by
this President (then as Vice President).
“The indemnity was given in
December 2014 when the late Miss Aikins (who was DPP when I was Attorney
General) was ordered to produce that criminal case docket I had left in her
custody to an officer of the Attorney General’s office upon the instructions of
this President. We are told this President is incorruptible? Tell it to the
marines,” Mr Amidu said.
Read the full article below:
PLEA TO FELLOW CITIZENS TO USE REPRESENTATIVE
ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY TO VOTE FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT OF INTEGRITY ON 7TH DECEMBER
2016: BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
Fellow citizens, no one will be
surprised about yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling which has stayed my examination
of Alfred Agbesi Woyome. As predicted, the Court has granted the stay of
proceedings and adjourned the examination to 15th December 2016 – a significant
date, because it occurs well after Ghana’s elections.
The incumbent
Government that architected the create, loot and share scheme from which Woyome
benefitted, could not allow details to emerge in an oral examination of Woyome
under oath because of the consequences it would have for the incumbent President
who is contesting the 2016 Presidential elections.
Instead, as I foretold
in all my entreaties to the public over the past few weeks, the looters and
lootee of Ghana’s public purse have done everything in their power to ensure the
Court’s earlier order for me to examine Woyome on oath has been overturned
before 7th December 2016. Even though I had anticipated this outcome, it was
important that I should stand up and take this fight over the integrity of the
public purse to our highest Court.
It has not been easy to step up and
take on an adversary who holds power through the highest position in the land.
Yet it mattered that someone should speak up for the Republic and its citizens
whose pockets continue to be plundered so that only a few benefit
unconstitutionally, while the ordinary people of Ghana face growing economic
hardship year over year. Remember that after the Supreme Court ruled and ordered
in my favour, the President of Ghana himself descended into the affray to
castigate the Court and praise his Attorney General who had just lost the
argument alongside their surrogate lootee, Woyome.
Woyome in tandem with
attack dogs let loose by the President’s intervention also took to the media to
castigate and cast aspersions on both the Supreme Court and my person. Woyome
then vowed to fight to the last drop of his blood to ensure that the Order for
me to examine him on oath would be overturned before 7th December
2016.
As avowed, Woyome filed and served me in the court room with an
application to reverse the Court’s order, and a stay of proceedings pending the
hearing of the application on the very 24th November 2016, the day I was meant
to examine him. The examination was adjourned to 1st December 2016. Yesterday,
1st December 2016, the Court heard the arguments from both parties amidst
personal insinuations on the Judge hearing the application for stay of
proceedings. Woyome’s lawyer asked the Judge outright why he the Judge appeared
to have problems with Woyome’s case. After Woyome’s lawyer finished arguing for
the stay, the Court asked the Attorney General’s representative whether
Government objected to the application for stay.
Not surprisingly her
answer was: “NO MY LORD”. Meaning they were in bed with Woyome all along. I
stood up and argued that even though the Court had discretion to stay
proceedings, the Court should on this occasion refuse the application because
Woyome, who has already been declared to have unconstitutionally looted the
public purse of over GHC51.2million, was coming to the Court with dirty hands
and asking to be granted the equitable relief of stay of proceedings. I urged
that the representative democratic process guaranteed by the Constitution
required the public to hear of Woyome’s means and property and the reasons why
Woyome had refused to pay back the monies more than two years after the Court’s
order to Woyome to do so.
Alas, the stay was granted, as I had predicted.
Fellow citizens, the technical processes of the law have been used to ensure
Woyome does not take the stand before 7th December 2016. It is true that the
efforts of the President and Woyome have succeeded in preventing you from
hearing in examination on oath what happened to the public purse looted by the
John Mahama Government for their Lootee, Woyome.
But the Constitution
provides you with one important chance to ensure that this President does not
have the opportunity ever again to protect his lootee, Woyome, from refunding
their unconstitutional loot. Right now you have the power to change this
incumbent President at the Presidential elections on 7th December 2016. Should
you vote for this looter President on 7th December 2016 we cannot get our over
GHC51.2million back with the accruing interest because he would continue to
protect Woyome as he has done since assuming office.
As the Citizen
Vigilante, I have done everything I could to use the constitutional process to
compel Woyome to pay back the monies he owes to the people of Ghana. Now I ask
that you use Ghana’s democratic process to stand up for what’s right, and to
protect the public purse from being plundered with impunity by the incumbent
Government whose conduct has been found to be unconstitutional right alongside
the likes of people like Alfred Agbesi Woyome.
The representative
democratic process provided for in our Constitution gives citizens the power to
change corrupt Governments and public purse looters like this President’s
Government once every four years at the Presidential elections. Vote this
President out on 7th December 2016 so that we do not need any further
examination orally on oath of Woyome by me in person for you to get your money
back. The new Government will have the duty of getting your money back in the
shortest possible time because of the confidence you would have reposed in it.
Do we wait another four years while a John Mahama Government drags its feet and
shields the very lootees it has helped?
Fellow Citizens, if you vote the
incumbent President back into power after 7th December 2016, I can assure you
that no examination on oath by me will ever get your money back again. You will
be re-electing a Government that has been deceiving you about its intention to
retrieve even a pesewa. This is why if we want our money back plus every
interest on it we must vote for a new President on 7th December 2016. Up until
now I have preferred to concentrate on the loot of GHC51.2million by the
Government for Woyome with Austro-Invest, the incumbent Attorney General’s
former client, and the Waterville case with over €47million unconstitutional
loot by this Government again for Waterville.
Fellow citizens, any time I
have urged you to vote for a new President, we are met with the Government
machinery reframing that this President has fought corruption and brought
development. I now take up the invitation to address those lies about the
incumbent President’s position on corruption that plunders public coffers, and
to set the records straight. The lies about the incorruptibility of this
President do not hold up to scrutiny against the available evidence. Just visit
my website and read my article dated 8th October 2012 titled: “Reporting a
sitting President or Government to any public institution to be investigated for
corruption” for evidence of this President and his Government’s irredeemable
corruption.
Let us look at examples of how the incumbent President has
plundered the public purse. Do you remember SADA where the President’s own
kinsmen and others who raped the public purse have never been dealt with? Why?
Because the President could not see to its prosecution since the President is
himself tainted by it. Do you recall the other projects such as the forestation
of northern Ghana and the guinea fowls being reared for Upper East Region;
projects that never existed and which were corrupt practices traceable to the
President himself. And so once again, he protected his friends.
Take time
to analyse the Atuabo Free Port Agreement and you cannot fail to see the
corruption embodied in it with Government institutions like SNNIT, GHAPOHA and
others being forced to contribute to the free carried interest which the foreign
beneficiary was to pay to the Government of Ghana. When some MPs went to Court
to question the contract, President Mahama said online that David Cameron, then
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had helped him, the President, to get
Lonrho to invest in Ghana. What the President failed to reveal was that he and
his other Ministers had personally made several personal visits to Lonrho in
Mauritius on the matter. It was an enterprise of corruption. Show us just one
conviction resulting from this incumbent President’s so called anti-corruption
campaign.
This President pretends to prosecute only those he dislikes
like Abuga Pele, the MP for Paga, and a few others. But he only uses the
pretended prosecutions to whip his wayward Party members into line. Heed well,
they say past behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour. John Mahama is not a
newcomer to the corrupt practice of aiding the looting of the public purse. As a
condition for President Mills signing the controversial executive consent to
permit the E.O. Group to assign its $300million shares to Tullow, the E.O. Group
agreed to pay $13million to the Government for the development of the Western
Region, and they called it corporate social responsibility. It was John Mahama
(as the Vice President) who orchestrated the unlawful deal which I refused to
endorse as the Attorney General at the time. It was Mahama who ensured that the
$13million was paid not to the Government of Ghana for the benefit of the
people, but into private pockets – which the late President Mills was shocked to
hear shortly before his death. So what is the talk of anti-corruption by this
incumbent President Mahama? During his tenure, Ben Kumbour who succeeded me as
Attorney General refused to give the indemnity that was demanded from me by this
President (then as Vice President). The indemnity was given in December 2014
when the late Miss Aikins (who was DPP when I was Attorney General) was ordered
to produce that criminal case docket I had left in her custody to an officer of
the Attorney General’s office upon the instructions of this President. We are
told this President is incorruptible? Tell it to the marines.
Let me
remind the public that the late Prof. Mills became convinced of the necessity to
set up a committee to investigate the hue and cry about the prices for the
acquisition of five (5) aircraft for the Ghana Armed Forces in July 2011. A
Committee to Investigate the Processes of the Acquisition of Five Aircrafts (5)
including Embraer 190 Aircraft and hanger for the Ghana Armed Forces consisting
of Mr. William Aboah, Mr. George Amoah, and Brig. Gen. Allotey (Rtd) and former
Judge Advocate-General, was put together. President Mills asked me to instruct
and draft the terms of reference for the Committee as follows: “(i) to
investigate the processes adopted in selecting, negotiating, and agreeing on the
acquisition of the aircrafts; (ii) to investigate the competitive advantage,
prices of the aircrafts and the level of economic and financial due diligence
conducted by relevant agencies in the process of acquisition of the aircrafts;
and (iii) to investigate any other matter that in the opinion of the Committee
is reasonably related to the foregoing terms of reference.”
The suspected
corruption involving President Mahama, then the Vice President, was covered up
because pressure groups never allowed the Committee to take off. The future of
the Committee was compromised for good when upon becoming President, this
President appointed the Chairman of the Committee as his National Security
Adviser, whom he dispensed with not long after to shut him up. The revelations
of endemic corruption in Brazil over the past few years should alert everyone as
to what happened during the aircraft purchases from Brazil. It is not too late.
A new Government can look into it again. The National Anti-Corruption Action
Plan? See my website for comments. Nothing concrete has happened except white
washing Government corruption. The Code of Conduct for Public Officers was work
in progress under Mills and has never been enacted. In spite of it, Ministers
who are accused of corruption in the award of contracts for bus rebranding are
simply asked to resign. Is that the famous fight this President conducts against
corruption which strips Ghana’s public coffers bare?
What of the Ford
Expedition saga? As he himself has said, John Mahama truly did not need a Ford
Expedition. Why then was the Ford Expedition sent to the President through the
Ghana Ambassador to Burkina Faso? One just has to read the letter from the Ghana
Embassy to Burkina Faso to the border authorities at Paga which was dated 29th
October 2012 and use common sense and the answer is obvious. Mahama had just
assumed office after Mills’ death and he was going into elections unprepared
financially. However, the President’s friend and beneficiary of contracts when
the President had just assumed office was ready to provide financial support.
The only way funds could be unconstitutionally imported into Ghana from Burkina
Faso was to be ingenious: through the Ford Expedition as the wrapper wrapping
the many dollars needed for the Mahama campaign. No searches. No questions. The
dollars are retrieved from the vehicle in Accra. The Ford Expedition is useless
thereafter to the President.
CHARAJ had no jurisdiction but the President
was too happy to have his own institution purport to clear him. A farce to make
the public believe the President has the people’s interests at heart, and that
his institutions will protect the public purse – while all the while it covered
an unconstitutional scheme at election time. Fight against corruption indeed!
These loose interpretations of corruption define the nature of an incumbent
President who is seeking to be re-elected. An incumbent President who places his
own interests and those of his friends and cronies ahead of the very people he
is sworn to protect. An incumbent President who willfully and intentionally aids
individuals such as Alfred Agbesi Woyome, and Waterville to freely loot and
plunder the public purse with impunity. Let me strengthen my Citizen Vigilante
fight by asking you, the people, to join together as you vote on 7th December to
keep the integrity of the public purse safe from the likes of an incumbent
President who has not hesitated to facilitate and conceal a range of
unconstitutional actions that in the end always leave the people of Ghana
poorer. Use your vote on 7th December to make a change in your own interest.
Vote for a new President because you no longer need an incumbent President who
is not accountable to the people who give him his power. Vote to get your looted
money back, with interest. Vote John Dramani Mahama out as President of Ghana.
Vote to uphold the Constitution that protects the Republic and the people of
Ghana.
Put Ghana First!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu 2 nd December
2016
