Cash-For-Seat: MEF Boss Ashim Morton Grilled

President of the Millennium Excellence Foundation, Ashim Morton, was yesterday grilled at the 'Cash for Seat' parliamentary probe by a member of the committee and National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga East, Dr Dominic Ayine.

It was about the role of the Foundation in the organization of Ghana Expatriate Business Awards, which was in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Industry on December 4, 2017, to recognize the contribution of expatriate businesses to the Ghanaian economy.

Mr Ashim Morton confirmed what the Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan Kyerematen, told the probe committee last Friday that nobody was made to pay $100,000 to sit on the high table with President Nana Akufo-Addo during the ceremony.

The witness, who was accompanied by his counsel, Charles W. Zwennes and Chairman of the Foundation, Ambassador Victor Gbeho, was particularly subjected to some critical questioning by Dr Ayine, who wanted to know whether it is a norm for the Foundation to charge fees for participants to attend such programmes.

The Millennium Excellence Foundation president said that it is not the norm to levy participants of such programmes but it had been the practice for the Foundation to seek sponsorship towards such programmes, including many others held in Nigeria and Kenya.

According to Mr Ashim Morton, his organization, which had been involved in such prestigious awards ceremonies, has unique fund-raising expertise, claiming that that had been significant in getting presidential assent in whichever country it had organized similar events.

He said that apart from Kenya and Nigeria where it had organized Lifetime African Achievement Awards with presidential support, the Foundation had also organized similar events during the regimes of President J.J. Rawlings, President J.A. Kufour, the late Prof Atta Mills and President John Mahama without charging any fees from any participants.

According to him, it goes out to potential sponsors and presents to them its objectives, the reasons for organizing such events and the benefits that would eventually go to them (sponsors) and based on that, corporate organisations and individuals voluntarily donate towards such cause.

Dr Ayine was insistent on how much the organization was able to raise during the time of former President J.J. Rawlings when the event was held in 1999, but counsel for the witness, Mr Zwennes, intervened and said that it had been a long time since that event was held and so his client did not have 'elephant memory' to remember that off-hand.

Mr Morton said that the impression also created by another witness, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa – NDC MP for North Tongu – when he appeared before the committee, that three companies paid $100,000 each before the event was held, is completely false.

According to him, the three companies mentioned by Mr Ablakwa are all subsidiaries of Interplast Group of Companies, which paid the only $100,000 – not before the event but rather after it.

He explained that Mr Saeed Fakhry, chairman of the Interplast Group, had been a personal friend to him for years that was why he made that contribution towards the successful organization of the event.

He further explained to the committee that when he sent out the sponsorship proposals to prospective sponsors and said that those who would be able to pay the $100,000 accompanied by those other benefits would sit with the 'president' on the high table, he did not mean the President of the Republic of Ghana but rather he (the president of the Millennium Excellence Foundation).