The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has cleared former President John Dramani Mahama of any corrupt allegations in the Airbus bribery scandal.
Briefing the press today Thursday, August 8, the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng said no evidence of corruption can be found against the former President who was named as Government Official 1 in the alleged scandal.
Kissi Agyebeng added that an intermediary, Samuel Adam Mahama, who is a brother of the former President never received any bribe of which Mahama was to benefit including other persons named in the scandal.
The Special Prosecutor has said he will not also institute criminal prosecution against persons named in the bribery scandal.
“The OSP found no evidentiary basis that suggests that Samuel Adam Foster also known as Samuel Adam Mahama, and Sarah Davies received payment from Airbus with the intention of bribing former President John Dramani Mahama or any other public official. Further, the OSP found no evidential basis that suggests that former President John Dramani Mahama or any other public official was paid bribes by Samuel Adam Foster also known as Samuel Adam Mahama in respect of the purchase of Government of Ghana military transport aircraft from Airbus,” Kissi Agyebeng said.
He has brought closure to the matter.
The press conference is ongoing and full details will be updated here.
Background
Ghana bought three Military Airplanes – C295s – from Airbus. The nation received its first C295 in November 2011. The second aircraft was received in April 2012 and the third in November 2015.
The deals covering them were argued at the time to be in line with the 2009-2012 Strategic Plan of the Ghana Armed Forces.
All three purchases, approved by Ghana’s Parliament after heated disagreements on the floor, were roundly marketed by the government of the day as a drive to modernize Ghana’s Air Force.
UK Court’s judgement
A judgement by England’s Crown Court in Southwark would appear to have now given a new life to earlier suspicions that the agreements covering the C295s especially were corrupt. The January 21, 2020 decision approved a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) between the Serious Fraud Office and Airbus SE, a subsidiary of Airbus, after investigations exposed massive bribery scandals involving the aircraft manufacturer in breach of the Bribery Act 2010.
In the case of Ghana, the Judgement of the Crown Court highlights instances where Airbus officials, as part of a scheme to obtain and or maintain contracts with the government, either bribed or agreed to bribe intermediaries with close links to a high-ranking state official said to have influence over the country’s aircraft purchase plans between 2011 and 2015.
The court documents did not mention any names but the timeframe stated in the judgement covered some periods of the Mills-Mahama era.
The first agreement to pay bribes in Ghana was to involve some €5 million which was disguised as a Commission to an intermediary – “intermediary 5” – engaged by Airbus to promote its proposal to sell two C295 aircraft to Ghana.
Eventually, due process tests exposed the dubious arrangements and no money was paid.
Subsequent approaches by Airbus succeeded, resulting in Ghana buying 3 C259 aircrafts through the multinational’s Spanish defence subsidiaries at separate times.
The deals were arranged through a number of intermediaries led by “intermediary 5”, said to be an unnamed relative of a powerful Ghanaian official who, at the relevant time, was in a decision-making position over the proposed aircraft purchase agreements.
However, after an internal investigation exposed the link between intermediary 5 and the unnamed high ranking government of Ghana official, a scheme was then hatched by the parties to route the transaction through a third party company of Spanish origin, which company had no previous dealings with Ghana.
The Spanish company was passed off as the facilitator of the proposed aircraft purchase agreements when in fact it was merely inserted into the arrangements to circumvent due diligence requirements in order to give the questionable transaction a clean bill of health. Upon conclusion of the deal with Ghana, under which two aircraft were initially sold, Airbus or its agents relied on false representations and documentation to pay bribe amounts close to €4 million to the Spanish third party company which in turn funnelled the payments to intermediary 5.