Mabey and Johnson bribery scandal

CHRAJ Begins Probe
Posted: Daily Guide |Monday, 15 March 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
THE COMMISSION on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) will today begin public hearing and possibly receive testimonies about some top members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) accused of receiving kickbacks in the infamous Mabey and Johnson (M&J) bribery scandal.

CHRAJ Commissioner, Francis Emile Short, told DAILY GUIDE over the weekend that all was set for him and his team to begin proceedings into the bribery scandal.

Mr Short hinted that his outfit had already received all the needed information on the case, and expressed optimism that the commission would take off on schedule since CHRAJ, as an institution, had started the needed contacts to get documents from the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in the UK.

It was also revealed that in spite of all the noise about the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Betty Mould-Iddrisu’s trip to the UK to meet officials there to get details of the case, she managed to give CHRAJ only part of what was needed, and that there were still more materials expected from her outfit.

“There are quite a number of documents which she is trying to get for us,” Mr Short said.

Though he admitted meeting the Chief Prosecutor in the M&J case, John Hardy, who was in the country on the invitation of the Danquah Institute (DI) to deliver a series of lectures on money laundering and international corruption, Commissioner Short noted that their discussion mostly centered on the lectures he delivered and not on the M&J case.

This, he said, was because “the main things that we want are the documents but he is not in a position to give us those documents.”

The M&J scandal involves six current and former government appointees including former Finance Minister, Kwame Peprah; Alhaji Baba Kamara, Ghana’s High Commissioner to Nigeria; former Minister of State at the Office of the President, Alhaji Amadu Seidu; Dr Ato Quarshie, a former Minister of Roads and Highways, who allegedly received the largest chunk of the bribe money; former Water Resources, Works and Housing Minister, Alhaji Saddique Boniface; former Minister of Health, Dr. George Adja-Sipa Yankey; and Edward Lord Attivor, currently Acting Managing Director of Intercity STC. He was Board chairman of STC at the time he allegedly took the M&J bribe.

The NDC officials, who mostly served in the Jerry Rawlings regime and carried over to the Atta Mills Administration, were accused of taking bribes totaling over £750,000, when M&J took up contracts to build bridges in Ghana in the 1990s.

From the mid 1980s until approximately 1996, M&J’s interests in Ghana were represented by one Kwame Ofori, also known as Danny Ofori-Atta, who controlled a Ghanaian bridge-building company, and apparently had influence within the circles of the then ruling NDC government then.

It was accepted by M&J that through the creation of the Ghana Development Fund (GDF), its executives facilitated corruption on behalf of the company and that they were in (or sought to create) a corrupt relationship with a variety of decision-making Ghanaian public officials.

These funds were purportedly for the development of M&J business in Ghana but, in reality, were capable of and were understood to be capable of being used for corrupt purposes.

Mr. Peprah was at that time Minister of Finance. The role of Baba Kamara and his value as an agent to M&J was made clear in a document authored by an M&J executive, probably prior to July 1996, and sent to its Directors.

Dr. Ato Quarshie, according to the report, received a cheque when he visited London in July 1995 in the sum of £55,000 for supposed ‘contract consultancy’.

This cheque was drawn on M&J’s Clydesdale Bank account at the Victoria branch in Buckingham Palace Road, and signed by two of the company’s Directors.

It was therefore the case of the prosecution that the payment to Dr. Quarshie and the following payments were but examples of a series of bribes to various ministers and officials.

Other relatively junior officials who were also alleged to have received some of the bribes included Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface, then an ECGD desk officer at the Ministry of Finance.

He had a bank account at the National Westminster Bank in Rickmansworth. On 29th February 1996, Saddique Boniface received a transfer of £10,000 from M&J to an account at Barclays Bank Plc in Watford.

On 29th October 1996, the same account received a transfer of £13,970 from M&J. On or about 29th October 1996, Amadu Seidu, the Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Roads and Highways, received £5000 in his Woolwich account held in St. Peter Port, Guernsey.

Dr. George Yankey, the Director of Legal and International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance, received £10,000 in his Midland Bank account in Hill Street, London W1; and Edward Lord Attivor, also received £10,000 in his London bank account.

Interestingly, it was the same branch of the Clydesdale Bank which was used by M&J.

Amadu Seidu received a further £5,000 on 7th March 1997, the same date on which Saddique Boniface received a further £2,500.

Although the amount was relatively small, the prosecution noted that it was indicative of the nature of the corruption M&J was then practising.

M&J's payments to Dr. Yankey were not confined to the payment on or about 24th October 1996, since his Hill Street account received £5,000 on 26th August 1998 from M&J.

Following the revelations, Dr. Yankey resigned as Health Minister, ostensibly to clear his name in the matter. And in the heat of the brouhaha, Alhaji Amadu Seidu was dropped as Minister of State at the Office President Mills, even though it was not clear why he was removed.

A potential appointee to the High Commission to Nigeria, Alhaji Baba Kamara, was however confirmed.

Dr Ato Quarshie also resigned his position as Probe Chairman of Metro Mass Transit while Lord Attivor and Kwame Peprah hold on to their positions as STC MD and SSNIT Board Chairman respectively.