Tsikata’s Libyan Connection

…And the 250,000 pound transfer

Captain Kojo Tsikata (rtd), the one time national security chief of the People's National Defence Council, PNDC, has been linked to a clandestine two hundred and fifty thousand pound transfer from the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddhafi.

The money, according to a British newspaper, Daily Mail of August 25, 1997, under the headline “Journalist quizzed over two hundred and fifty thousand pound back riddle was channeled through the back account of a leading British journalist, Victoria Britain to Captain Tsikata. The female British senior journalist was described by the paper as a long standing journalist friend of Captain Tsikata.

Victoria, according to the report, was questioned by her editor over her role as a conduit for the money transfer to Tsikata. A phone tap by M15, the British Intelligence organization, operatives at her Islington home in North London, revealed that she was in contact with Captain Kojo Tsikata and agents were subsequently asked to trail her, in an operation which span over a year, according to the report. The transaction was prompted by Captain Tsikata's dire need of funds to fight a legal case with a British newspaper, Independent, which he charged, had carried a libelous article linking him to the 1982 murder of the three high court judges and the retired military officer in 1994.

According to the Guardian newspaper, another British newspaper which Victoria Britain worked with as the deputy foreign editor, attracted the attention of the British intelligence expert, David Shayler, who put her under surveillance suspecting that she was a left wing trouble-make whose contacts with Gaddhafi could be a threat to British interest.

The intelligence mission was aborted however when it was established that the money transfer was to enable Captain Tsikata meet the legal cost of a libel case and therefore posed no direct threat to British interest as earlier feared. The funds were alleged to have been transferred from Libyan sources to Victoria Brittain's accounts, a report, which her lawyers have denied.

British intelligence expended an amount of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds just to tap Victoria's phone line, and track her down.

Miss Brittain is a respected British journalist who has a proneness for the third world affairs. This revelation is yet another proof of the retired Captains complex security network spanning many terrains. He had links with Angola especially at the time that country was fighting its liberation war, which brings to mind also the cordial relationship he had with Muammar Gaddhafi, a link he is alleged to have utilized to access the much-need funds to fight the Independent newspaper of Britain. The outcome of the legal battle Captain Tsikata fought with the Independent is itself shrouded in controversy and might acquire a revision, against the backdrop of fresh revelations in recent times.

A British newspaper, Daily Guide, has for instance not apologized to the Captain, nor has it accepted that it had goofed for carrying the story about his role in the murder of the judges and the retired military officer.