$35m for NPP's 2004 election war chest

Ghana Palaver?s ongoing investigations into the NPP government?s $1 billion loan scam still continues to reveal startling information.

The so-called International Finance Consortium (IFC), for example has no website of its own and therefore cannot be accessed on the Internet. Chemac Inc., alleged representatives of the IFC is however on the Internet with their address as www.chemacinc.com.

From their website, Ghana Palaver has been able to access that the company is a sales service centre for high pressure industrial and sealing machinery. Its International consulting division has just begun focusing on infrastructure projects in developing countries and they now plan to open offices in the Far East and Africa.

Total worldwide projects, which have been under consideration by the Company since 1996 are valued at around $1.1 billion. There is no mention of what the projects are or where they are located. The company?s only recorded association with the United Nations (UN) is alleged recent donation of $250,000 for drug treatment research that is partly funded by the UN.

The President of the company is Horst Schneider, who appears to be the spokesperson for the so-called IFC. The General Manager is Andreas Schneider. There is also a Chris Schneider listed in its Houston office. The website does not indicate whether the three are related. Apart from Chemac Inc., nothing is known about any other members of the so-called IFC.

Meanwhile, strong reservations about the ?loan agreement? continue to be expressed. An official of the Bank of Ghana (BOG) who spoke on condition of anonymity revealed that the former Governor of BOG, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, refused to be part of a similar scam soon after the NPP came into power last year. At that time, the offer was made from a so-called UK Financing Group- which was introduced to him by Finance Minister, Hon Yaw Osafo-Maafo.

Dr Duffuor checked and discovered the group?s given address to be a London back street residence. He put his foot down and formally wrote to express his reservations about the scheme. The NPP government reluctantly backed down and got Dr Akoto Osei, Special Assistant to the Minister of Finance to write to cancel the arrangement. According to the official, this was the major reason why Dr Duffuor was compelled to resign. Dr Duffuor could not be reached to confirm or deny this information.

In another development, the Palaver has also learnt that the 3.5 per cent transaction fee demanded in the agreement is excessive, exorbitant and fraudulent. Officials at the Ministry of Finance confirmed that as at the time the NDC government was leaving office, the transaction fee for the syndication of any foreign loan was 1 per cent.

It will be recalled that at the NDC press conference last Monday on the scam the General Secretary, Dr Josiah Aryeh, in explaining how they typically work, stated that the international fraudsters, after identifying a national of the targeted developing country of good standing and who is very well-connected within the corridors of decision-making and power, then makes a promise of contributing to the election war chest of the party in power after presenting a scheme for mobilizing external loan resources in the billions of dollars for the country.

The well-connected Ghanaian in this case was identified as one Professor Eddie Ayensu by a voice purporting to belong to a Horst Schneider, which spoke on an Accra radio in a telephone interview broadcast on 8 July 2002. Prof Ayensu is a loud-mouthed, names-dropping Ghanaian expatriate who is very well-known to almost all the former NDC Ministers, having tried at one time or the other to draw them into similar very suspicious financial transactions.

The loan agreement under the scheme usually follows the same pattern; a big amount in US dollars, a long repayment period, a grace period, a very low interest rate, an unconditional sovereign guarantee and a transaction fee. Clearly, the 3.5 per cent or the $35 million transaction fee under the present agreement represents what will be shared between the so-called IFC and the NPP for the ruling party to use as its war chest in the 2004 general elections.

Otherwise, the paper finds it difficult to understand why Ghana?s ?best and brightest? in the NPP Cabinet could have been taken in by such an agreement, making them look like ?unsophisticated illiterate simpletons,? to borrow the language of Akufo-Addo JSC in the case of State versus Otchere and Others (1963) 2. GLR at 529 in which Ako Adjei, a member of Ghana?s ?Big Six? and a lawyer by profession, claimed that he had left 25,000 Pound Sterling in the Dodowa fields for the Spirit of Zebus of the Kingdom of Uranus to come and double it for him.