Agyapa deal: Ofori-Atta must recuse himself - IMANI

The Founding President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe is calling on the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, and his Deputy, Charles Adu Boahen to recuse themselves from having anything to do with the Agyapa Gold Royalties Management agreement.

The Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu in his Agyapa Royalties Agreement corruption risk assessment said the deal submitted to parliament and passed thereof by the house, was among other things susceptible to “nepotism, cronyism and favouritism.”

He added that the deal also lacked probity and accountability.

Reacting to the Special Prosecutor's findings, Franklin Cudjoe in an interview with GhanaWeb said owing to the issue of conflict of interest among other matters raised by the Special Prosecutor, it will be prudent for the Finance Minister and his Deputy to step aside from working on the deal.

“The moment those issues have come up the people affected, my good friends Charles Adu Boahen and Ken Ofori Atta are very smart people, technically competent people but I think on this matter by the Special Prosecutors pronouncements they are too conflicted, they need to step back on the deal and allow others to take over and negotiate it properly,’ he said.

According to the IMANI boss, even though there are issues with the deal, some of which were earlier raised by IMANI, they are not calling for an abrogation since the idea of maximising the value of the nation’s resources is not a bad one, but demands a thorough and transparent process.

“Nobody is against capitalist maximisation of value, we are not against it. What we are against is the process leading to that. Even by our own calculations, based on international comparators and local comparators we think the value should have been about $2.5 billion and not a billion dollars,” he said.