Deal with M&J Corrupt ministers – CPP
The Convention People's Party CPP has asked government to investigate bribery allegations, implicating some senior officers of state and take appropriate action against them.
According to William Dowokpor, Communications Director, any attempts to cover up in the bribery scandal involving six senior NDC officials and a Former minister in the NPP administration will be disastrous for the party and they in the CPP will stand against it.
“We encourage the Mills administration to quickly investigate the scandal and bring those found guilty of accepting bribes in the award of multi-million dollar contracts to the UK construction firm, Mabey & Johnson, to book”.
He said, the CPP is concerned that at a time when Ghana is struggling to set the pace in good governance, political, economic, corporate and socio-economic management, high profile government officials should be accused of taking bribes as part of the process of awarding contracts.
“The CPP believes the scandal has the real potential of affecting the transparent, effective and efficient management of Ghana's new oil find should there be any cover up and protection for any official found guilty”.
He cautioned government to deal with this scandal transparently and decisively in order that the “Branding Ghana” project it has recently initiated, does not suffer credibility crisis.
British bridge contractor Mabey & Johnson was convicted of overseas corruption and breaching UN sanctions last week. Mabey & Johnson pleaded guilty to trying to influence officials in Jamaica and Ghana when bidding for public contracts.
It also paid money to Saddam Hussein's Iraq regime, violating the terms of the UN oil-for-food programme.
The company will also have to pay £1,413,611 as reparations to Ghana, Jamaica and Iraq.
Mabey & Johnson secured contracts worth £60m by bribing foreign politicians and other officials with pay-outs worth a total of £1m.
The officials cited in the document containing a UK court ruling on the bribery scandal include Dr Ato Quarshie, then Minister of Roads and Highways; Alhaji Saddique Abubakar, then desk officer at the Ministry of Finance; Alhaji Baba Kamara, one time Treasure of the NDC; Amadu Seidu, the Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways then, and George Sipa Yankey, a legal officer at the Ministry of Finance. Dr Yankey is the current Minister of Health in the second administration of the NDC.
Dr Ato Quarshie received a cheque when he visited London in July 1995 in the sum of £55,000 for “contract consultancy”. The cheque was drawn on M&J's Clydesdale Bank account at the Victoria branch in Buckingham Palace Road, and signed by Director A, and another M&J director at that time. Director A also faxed the bank instructions to enable Dr Quarshie to cash the cheque.
The payment to Dr. Quarshie and the following payments are but examples of a wider-ranging series of bribes to various ministers and officials, which will be set out in a schedule. Even relatively junior officials were the willing recipients of bribes.
In 1996 Saddique Boniface was the ECGD desk officer in the Ministry of Finance (he was recently until the change of government a highly placed politician within the Ghanaian administration).
He had a bank account at the National Westminster Bank in Rickmansworth. On 29 February 1996 Saddique Boniface received a transfer of £10,000 from M&J to an account at Barclays Bank Plc in Watford.