Komla Dumor, Raymond Archer to be sued over “kickback” saga

7 years after media reports indicated that he had accused former President Kufuor of taking “kickbacks” on contracts awarded by his government, former National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, Haruna Esseku has dismissed his association with the words stressing he never used that word.

According to him, the word was attributed to him by the Editor of the Enquirer newspaper, Raymond Archer.

In a revealing interview on the personality profile edition of Multi TV's current affairs show, pm: EXPRESS, Mr. Esseku said he is taking legal action against Mr. Archer for attributing to him a word he never used after having granted him an interview on concerns he had raised about the funding of the then ruling NPP.

According to Mr. Esseku, former Joy FM Super Morning Show host, Komla Dumor will also be roped into the law suit for picking up on the allegations in the story by Mr. Archer insisting there was documentary evidence on tape to support the publication.

In 2005, the Enquirer newspaper run a serialized story in which it reported that Mr. Esseku had alleged that then President John Kufuor had become a treasurer receiving kickbacks at the castle from contractors and failing to distribute the money fairly.

But in a rebuttal after almost 7 years on pm: EXPRESS, the controversial former chairman who describes himself as a social extrovert said, he never used the word 'kickback' which is akin to bribery – instead Raymond Archer dreamt up the word and attributed it to him.

Mr. Esseku explained he is suing the two gentlemen for the erroneous report which has lived up the years to the point where he has even been nicknamed “kickback”.

“All I was talking about was the custody of party funds”. He explains that in political parties, the president is the number one fundraiser after which the collated money is released to the party chairman for onward disbursement to the regions to fund the party's activities in the constituencies – insisting that was all he was talking about in the interview he granted Mr. Archer.