The revelations by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Mineral Income Investment Fund (MIIF) that a staggering US$12 million was spent on the failed Agyapa Royalties deal, has consumed an unintended casualty, veteran journalist, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako.
He had in the wake of the scandal first broke by The Herald newspaper in a spirited defence, insisted that Africa Legal Associates, an Accra-based law firm owned by Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, was not paid US$2 million for its work on the Agyapa Royalties deal. But recent revelation challenged his claims.
The figure was bandied about nearly four years ago by some persons as the amount Gabby and his firm grabbed for their advisory role on the deal. But Baako claimed the quoted amount was way above what was paid to the law firm by the government.
“It is not true that Gabby’s firm got US$2 million from the deal. It is not true that his firm is a beneficiary of US$2 million. It’s not even up to US$105,000. It is the main transaction advisor that paid Gabby. It is about US$103,000. It is not US$2 million”, the editor-in-chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper had insisted.
He clarified that, Britain-based White & Case LLP International Law Firm a UK-based law firm, was the principal advisor on the deal and Africa Legal Associates worked for the firm. Also there was Bentsi-Enchill, Letsa & Ankomah.
The Herald’s investigations had landed that a knighted Ghanaian with British nationality, Joshua Siaw, a partner in White & Case’s Global Debt Finance Practice and director of the Firm’s Africa practice, is a known friend of Gabby. Their law firms, have been involved in gigs involving the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).
The deal was fraught with assertions of nepotism, the presence of some key individuals and their companies, as well as their financial interests, including the immediate past Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta and his Databank Financial Service,s as well as its South Africa partners, Imara Holding Limited of South Africa.
The roles played by Kofi Bosompem Osafo-Maafo, the son of ex-Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Marfo and a Deputy Director-General at the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) in charge of Investment & Development and Gabby Otchere Darko, a cousin of the President, Nana Akufo-Addo, were also at the centre of the scandal.
However, before the government placed the deal on ice to allow further deliberations with Civil Society Organizations, Baako held the view that people were making a mountain out of a molehill.
He was quoted by Ghanaweb in September 2020, as having likened the conflict of interest situation to Ibrahim Mahama’s companies getting contracts during the John Mahama regime and Nana Konadu Agyemang under the Rawlings regime.
“We have to be consistent. We have to be coherent. I don’t expect everybody to agree with me and I expect people who disagree with it vehemently if they like violently, disagree with me and criticize me”.
“The way we’re going around this politics, the so-called conflict of interest relative to political office holders over the period, I see a certain huge area of inconsistency and incoherence and I’m worried about that. This is not going to be the last time this will happen; you bet me!”
Ken Ofori-Atta’s company, Kweku Baako Jnr, further insisted that Data Bank, had as of November 2020 not received any payment for their role as financial advisors in the Agyapa Royalty agreement.
This was after it was publicly held that the investment bank which is owned by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, enjoyed monetary benefit from the deal.
On Tuesday, November 10, 2020, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) demanded the government to retrieve monies it claimed had been paid to Data Bank.
The opposition party gave the government a seven-day ultimatum to recover the monies, the failure of which will propel them to embark on a mammoth demonstration in the first week of December. The protest did not happen.
“The NDC, hereby, demands that President Akufo-Addo retrieves the state’s the billions of cedis his government has illegally paid under the shady ‘Agyapa’ deal to Databank, which is owned by his cousin and Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta; African Legal Associates, which is owned by another cousin of his, Gabby Otchere Darko; and their foreign compradors, within the next 7 days, failing which the NDC and other like-minded progressive forces shall embark on series of protest and legal actions to ensure that every pesewa paid to these companies are refunded back to the State for nation-building,” Asiedu Nketia, the then General Secretary of the NDC said at a presser.
In a reaction to the NDC’s demands, Kweku Baako, said that information available to him indicates that Data Bank, received no monies for their role in the deal.
“They made some demands that the president should ensure that some monies paid are retrieved. I have been told on authority that Data Bank as we sit here has not been paid a pesewa or dollar. But some payments have been done for Africa Legal Associates and the others,” Baako disclosed on Peace FM.
But in a post on Facebook, Gabby Otchere Darko, a leading member of the governing party, said that Data Bank, would have been given a certain amount of money had the deal been successful.
“You are calling on your supporters and Ghanaians to join you on the street to stage a massive demonstration to ask for a refund for fees paid to transaction advisors, including law firms for services rendered per a contract? (Note: Databank has received no money for work done so far. Databank was only to earn a success fee at the end of the transaction). That is why, with tongue in cheek, I wish to proclaim: I love the NDC! Fantastic bunch of patriots! Bless them! part of the statement reads.
Almost four years on, it emerged last week at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament, that US$12 million was spent on setting up the offshore company which never materialized, but died on paper.
The CEO of MIIF, Edward Nana Yaw Koranteng, disclosed to the PAC that the Akufo-Addo government spent US$12 million on the failed Agyapa royalties deal.
But the US$12 million might just be the tip of the iceberg as the Auditor-General has, according to Kofi Adams, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Buem and a member of PAC, not captured the Agyapa Royalties deal in his report three years since it collapsed.
It is, therefore not clear how much Databank, Imara Holding Limited of South Africa, White & Case LLP International Law Firm, the two Ghanaian law firms Bentsi-Enchill, Letsa & Ankomah, and Africa Legal Associates, got as transaction advisors for the monetization of Ghana’s gold royalties through the dual listing of the Agyapa Gold Royalties Company on the Ghana and London Stock Exchanges.
Interestingly, MP for Abuakwa South, Samuel Atta Akyea, a cousin of Ken Ofori-Atta and Gabby Ochere-Dark, has cautioned the opposition NDC against its rhetoric on allegations of corruption in the Akufo-Addo government, accusing the party of resorting to concluding that allegations of wrongdoing in the government are crimes, even without any shred of evidence.
He gave this caution while reacting to members of the NDC, including the National Communication Officer of the party, Sammy Gyamfi, saying that government officials and individuals implicated in the US$12 million expenditure on the suspended Agyapa Royalties deal are guilty of a crime and would be dealt with if they come to power.
Atta Akyea, argued that the fact that something went wrong in the Agyapa deal does not necessarily imply that a crime was committed.
He cautioned that the NDC was only endangering Ghana’s democracy with its baseless allegations, which are only aimed at winning the favour of Ghanaians for the upcoming elections, myjoyonline.com reports.
“Bear in mind that, in this feverish pitch to succeed Akufo-Addo, the NDC, should not sort of make a fetish of every issue as if everything is criminal.
“This nation is not safe with this level of propaganda, and press conferences are not just conclusive evidence of culpability and criminality, as it were. I want to stress also, let’s be careful. If there is a poor error of judgment in the investment in Agyapa, it will not be tantamount to criminality,” the MP is quoted to have said on JoyNews’ Top Story.
Sammy Gyamfi, who was also on the show, contended that if there were no illegalities with the Agyapa deal, the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), would not have asked the president to suspend it.
He said that OSP’s investigation, proved that the Agyapa deal was not beneficial to the state, which led to its suspension.
“If the Special prosecutor was not a court and the President does not agree with the position of the Special Prosecutor, why suspend the bill?” he quizzed.
However, Atta Akyea, did not agree with the NDC National Communications Officer’s suggestion.
He said that if the NDC has an issue with the deal, they should go to court and should stop calling people who have not been found guilty of any crimes criminals.
“If you convert the thinking of NDC to the decision of a court of competent jurisdiction, we know what the law is like.
“The accused persons will have a right to stand; they present the evidence and the rest of it, and it will culminate in a decision. If we don’t go this route and we still believe that in the name of propaganda, let’s turn the laws of Ghana upside down, and in the convenience of a one-sided press conference, let’s denigrate others; I am afraid that is not democracy, that is propaganda,” the MP said.
