Documents Were Forged - Dr. Yankey

Dr. George Sipa-Adjah Yankey has categorically denied any involvement in a Fifty Five Million Dollars loan facility from KBC Bank of London for the ?ailing and almost defunct? national carrier, Ghana Airways.

The former President of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development and just returned from the Koforidua Central prisons for willfully doing an act to cause financial loss to the country said whatever documents was in question was forged.

He admitted though that there were signatures on a photocopied document shown him by a certain CID DSP Nyarko that looked like his and that of convicted Former Finance Minister R. Kwame Peprah, but was certain someone somewhere wanted to create mischief.

He challenged all those who he said were trying to pull a fast one to determine how he could have signed the document on the 8th of March 2001 when he was not in the country.

Above all, he insisted that there were so many inconsistencies in the document that even a lay person in the right frame of mind could identify the document for what it was and treat it the way it has to be treated-for the Trash can.

Dr. Yankey however expressed willingness and readiness to co-operate with the Police if it really wants to establish the truth.

Dr. Yankey who served as Director for the Legal Department of the Ministry of Finance was sad that certain persons who are uncomfortable with his presence in the country and would stop at nothing to deny him his peace of mind are making him violate his vow to forgive.

He specifically accused the publishers and staff of the Accra based Daily Guide newspaper of engaging in clandestine activities aimed at destroying his reputation.

In his submission, even though he had out of curiosity glanced through excerpts of the three page document in the media, he had never set eyes on the document he is alleged to have witnessed with Mr. Peprah until last Tuesday when he went to the Police CID.

Dr Yankey recalled that he took up an appointment at the Togolese capital Lome in February 2001, as President of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development. He contends that as at the 8th of March 2001 when the document was allegedly signed, he was still in Lome and could not have witnessed it.

This fact was proved with a photocopy of his passport, which revealed that between 6t and 12t March 2001, Dr. Yankey was in neighboring Togo.

He also revealed that somewhere in 1999 he and Mr. Peprah signed a Support Agreement document on behalf of Ghana Airways and believes some mischievous persons superimposed their signatures on that document ?to paint us crooks in the eyes on the public.?

But he also thought the document he saw at the Police Headquarters was something done by a novice because apart from the texts on the three-page document varying from page to page, other inscriptions on it have been cancelled with pen while others were hand written.

?What is the motivation in this, how could we have done this, when we are not in government. And especially me when this government was harassing me all over the place over the Quality Grain case. Are we crooks??

He said though he has dealt with many banks in the world, he has never heard nor had anything to do with a bank called KBC of London let alone meet any of its officials called Guy Liddle.

?I have dealt with many banks but I don?t recall dealing with KBC Bank of London.?

He is therefore throwing a challenge to the Ghanaian media, the investigators and for that matter the government to make contact with the said official of the Bank to prove them wrong.

Meanwhile Mr. Peprah who the Police CID met last Wednesday at the Sekondi Prison at the Western Region where he is serving his four year jail sentence over his involvement in the Quality Grain case has also denied that he signed that loan Agreement.

Mr. Peprah questioned in the statement the circumstances under which Minister for Finance Yaw Osafo-Maafo responded to a correspondence between him and officials of the said Bank on September 10 2001.