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Chop Chop At Edif (2)

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 Source: Richard Boafo

Nana Yeboah Kodie Asare Ii Involved

Nana Yeboah Kodie Asare II, Chief of Bosomkyekye in the Ashanti region and former board member of Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF), has been exposed for taking advantage of his position to influence an award of contract to his non-exiting company days before the company was registered at the Registrar General’s Department.

The fake company, Alliance Farms Limited, secured a contract worth over 2 billion cedis (old) from EDIF on 4th March, 2011 to cultivate 100 acres of Kent and Keitt mango under the Export Development and Investment Fund recoverable facility when the ghost company was not a legal entity.

Checks at the Register General’s Department reveal that the company was entitled to commence business on 16th March, 2011 and therefore Nana Kodie Asare acted illegally by using the name of the nonexistent company to transact business. The approval for the deal from the Board was however sought by the Acting Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Agyabeng Antwi-Agyei on 17th March, 2011 after he had unilaterally entered into a contract with the company two weeks earlier which was chaired by Nana Kodie Asare II, involved in the fraudulent act to dupe the nation.

Our checks also revealed that Alliance Farms Limited, claimed to be located in the Brong Ahafo Region is actually in the Ashanti Region and therefore did not qualify to benefit from the fund, a situation which establishes another element of deceit and criminality on the part of the fraudsters.

The Acting Chief Executive, who is now on interdiction, usurped the authority of the Board of Directors (BoD) in writing to 38 farms/companies which benefited from the facility. He lied to the BoD that it was the former Board Chairman, Peter Illiasu who authorised him to issue the award letters. It has also been found out that in addition to sending out award letters without authority, the Ag. Chief Executive also caused various sums of monies to be paid to the farms/ companies before the matter came before the BoD.

Nana Kodie Asare II, Chief of Bosomkyekye and known in private life as Benjamin Kwadjo Addae has 90% stake in Alliance Farms after the deal was unmasked, tendered in his letter of resignation to the presidency citing Section 11 of the EDIF law as the main consideration for his decision and hopes to seek interpretation of the law at the High Court.

Nana Kodie Asare II’s action, according to some business executive, constitutes a crime, conflict of interest and betrayal of trust of the Private Enterprises Foundation (PEF) he represented on the Board.

Conflicts of interest is any situation in which an individual or corporation (either private or governmental) is in a position to exploit a professional or official capacity in some way for their personal or corporate benefit. Conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other.

The law takes the view that good faith must not only be done, but must be manifestly seen to be done, and zealously patrols the conduct of directors in this regard; and will not allow directors to escape liability by asserting that his decision was in fact well founded.

The most common forms of conflicts of interests: Self-dealing, in which an official who controls an organization causes it to enter into a transaction with the official, or with another organization that benefits the official. The official is on both sides of the "deal." Outside employment, in which the interests of one job contradict another.

Family interests, in which a spouse, child, or other close relative is employed (or applies for employment) or where goods or services are purchased from such a relative or a firm controlled by a relative. For this reason, many employment applications ask if one is related to a current employee. If this is the case, the relative could then recuse from any hiring decisions. Abuse of this type of conflict of interest is called nepotism.

Gifts from friends who also do business with the person receiving the gifts. (Such gifts may include non-tangible things of value such as transportation and lodging.)

Pump and dump, in which a stock broker who owns a security artificially inflates the price by "upgrading" it or spreading rumours, sells the security and adds short position, then "downgrades" the security or spreads negative rumours to push the price down.

Source: Richard Boafo