…They 'chop' money intended for NDC ways and means committee
Further search into the raging bribery scandal involving some government functionaries of the first NDC administration, headed by former Flt. Lt. Rawlings, has shown that the said officials tricked M&J that the monies were meant for the Ways & Means Committee of the NDC.
The NDC Ways & Means Committee was headed by former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah with Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, Mr. Kwame Peprah among others as members.
The group was responsible for the raising of funds for the NDC. Among their reference duties was to take 3-5 per cent of all foreign contracts into the 'Ways and Means' Committee of the NDC.
However in the party's dealing with UK firm, M & J TODAY gathered that the top NDC shots whose names have come up in the company's bribery scandal dribbled the NDC and its Ways and Means Committee by allegedly pocketing the monies which they had told M&J were meant for the Ways & Means Committee of the NDC.
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.
On 29 October 1996 the same account received a transfer of £13,970 from M&J. On or about 29 October 1996 Amadu Seidu, the Deputy Minister at the MRH, received £5000 in his Woolwich account held in St. Peter Port, Guernsey and Dr George Yankey the Director of Legal and International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance, received £10,000 in his Midland Bank account in Hill Street, London W1; and Edward Lord Attivor, the ex minister at the MRH, also received £10,000 in his London bank account.
This was the same branch of the Clydesdale Bank which was used by M&J. Authorisation from M&J directors for each of these transfers was requested by Director D. Amadu Seidu received a further £5,000 on 7 March 1997, the same date on which Saddique Boniface received a further £2,500. The latter two transfers were authorised by Director B.
Mr Boniface's son was a student at Exeter University, where, on or about 26 March 1998, he received a cheque from M&J in the sum of £500. Although this is a relatively small sum it is indicative of the nature of the corruption M&J was then practising: it is a payment which could have no conceivable legitimate commercial purpose.
M&J's payments to Dr Yankey were not confined to the payment on or about 24 October 1996, since his Hill Street account received £5,000 on 26 August 1998 from M&J. Dr Yankey was subsequently convicted in Ghana of conspiring to willfully cause losses to the state and served a prison sentence, along with Kwame Peprah.
Source: - The Ghanaian Journal
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