Agyapa deal: Amidu missed more serious issues in his report – Bright Simons

Honorary Vice President of think tank, IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, has said while the corruption risk assessment of the Agyapa Royalties agreement has established grave infractions, what was not covered is even more frightening.

According to him, the assessment by the Office of Special Prosecutor (OSP) has only scratched the surface of the major issues with the deal because the Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu, only had a short time to work with.

“What people don’t realise is that when a preliminary report churns out such damning findings, it is actually very bad. Because usually, a preliminary report is to look for the usually prima facie bad things about something.

“Those of us who have been spending a lot of time on [the Agyapa deal] found that the OSP omitted a number of very grievous problems with the agreement,” he said.

He made the comments Saturday, November 7, 2020, on Newsfile, a current affairs analysis programme on Joy News.

Mr Simons said another reason the Special Prosecutor could not uncover the more serious problems is because he (Martin Amidu) failed to contact civil society groups that have spent months interrogating the transaction.

“The OSP should have reached out to civil society. Because we have been spending months working on this and he [Martin Amidu] had just a few weeks. And if he had relied on civil society, some of the omissions in the report, which actually frightens me more, would have been prevented.

“The things that he wrote in a colourful language like 'lack of ethics', 'greed', 'self-interest' and people have latched on to that is understandable. But there are more grievous problems that he could not uncover within the spate of time [that he had to work with],” he added.

Mr Simons and IMANI Africa have been speaking against the deal since it was passed by a one-sided Parliament.

He said a deliberate decision by the Finance Ministry to change the procurement approval it had obtained from the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) is one such grave omissions in Mr Amidu’s report.

According to him, although the Finance Ministry applied for and obtained approval to hire Transaction Advisors, it quickly changed this approval to include setting up the Agyapa Royalties Ltd to trade minerals on behalf of the Government of Ghana.