SOME TIME in 2005, a certain gentleman approached leading members of the then government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). He had a simple but wonderful case to make; according to him, he had investors in South Korea, and they were prepared to invest two billion dollars in Ghana’s rail system which would lead to the laying down of railway networks across the length and breadth of Ghana! According to him, his ‘investors’ from South Korea were prepared to build a totally new and spanking rail system across the length and breadth of the country, and all that he needed was government backing.
So sweet was his story, that a government delegation, led by then Deputy Minister for Ports, Harbours and Railways, Sophia Honnah Sam followed him to far away Seoul, Korea, in a chase for the two billion dollars.
Needless to say, that government delegation came back from South Korea with nothing to show! The trip was a totally wasted trip, and today, Ghana’s railway system, which requires over two billion dollars to revamp, is still as it is. The hundreds of millions of dollars he promised never came.
Worse, the South Korean investors he led to Ghana were in tears, because the man who led them to Ghana had allegedly bilked them out of over four hundred thousand dollars for reasons that are still unclear!
The name of that gentleman was Mr. B. K. Asamoah, and he is also the brain and main front man behind the controversial STX Engineering and Construction deal, the flagship program that the Atta Mills government hopes would transform Ghana into heaven!
This time round, he is not promising two billion dollars, but ten billion dollars! And as in his previous attempt, he is also seeking a government of Ghana ‘sovereign guarantee’! So far, Ghana is yet to part with the sovereign guarantee, and the Koreans are yet to start weeping.
Extensive interviews conducted by the Daily Searchlight among many of the key players in the KoRail fiasco at the time reveal that sometime in late 2005, Mr. B. K. Asamoah suddenly appeared at the then Ministry for Ports, Harbours and Railways with news that he was leading a company called KoRail from Korea which was interested in investing huge sums of monies into the Ghana Railway Company. The intention was to pump huge amounts of monies from ready investors in South Korea through his company, KoRail into the Ghana Railway Company. The Koreans, allegedly, had powerful backers in Croatia who were prepared to grant billions of dollars in loans to the government of Ghana.
We have gathered that so sweet was the promises from Mr. B. K. Asamoah, that government delegated a whole Deputy Minister in the person of Madam Sophia Honnah Sam at the head of a team of experts to go to South Korea to explore the viability of Asamoah’s proposals.
In South Korea, Mr. Asamoah then took them of a grand tour of the capital, as well as various railway infrastructures and eventually took them to the local branch of the Exim Bank, where he was allegedly going to source the money.
This newspaper has learned that eventually what the entire trip boiled down to was that the Koreans could only decide to part with money if the government of Ghana was prepared to part with a ‘sovereign guarantee’ a scenario which the then sector Minister Professor Ameyaw Ekumfi was totally opposed to said one of the players in that ill-fated sortie to South Korea, “If the man who led us to South Korea is the same person fronting the STX deal, then the government of Ghana would do well to be careful, because they can get their hands dangerously burnt. We realized very quickly that the entire mission of the trip to South Korea was the sovereign guarantee.
“Worse, soon after the project fell through, the Koreans came to us in tears to complain that Asamoah had taken over four hundred thousand dollars out of them, for purposes that are still unclear,” the source concluded.
More Anon!
…The Story Of B. K. Asamoah,
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