'Gov't smuggled extraneous matters into JDC report'

Former Attorney General, Martin Amidu, has accused government of smuggling extraneous matters into the Sole Judgment Debt Commissioner’s report.

Mr. Amidu said the Bankswitch Ghana v Government of Ghana case, as well as the decision that was reached at the alleged Permanent Court of Arbitration, was not part of the enquiry and report of the Sole Commissioner on Judgment Debts, but government and the Attorney General, nonetheless, found it honourable to hoodwink Ghanaians by smuggling it into a White Paper on the Commissioner’s report pursuant to Article 280.

This, according to Mr Amidu, is a deliberate and inexcusable cover-up of the government’s complicity in compounding the Bankswitch Ghana arbitral award or debt, which he had advised the government, as Attorney General, in 2011, to settle because it had a very bad case to prevail at any arbitration.

In a statement, the anti-corruption campaigner also accused the government and the Attorney General of finding it “honourable” to smuggle into the White Paper on the Commissioner’s report, the Balkan Energy Ghana case, which was argued by him as Attorney General before the Supreme Court, and conclusively decided in favour of the Republic, and was not the subject of the Commissioner’s enquiry.

In his words, “as for the attempt in the White Paper to water down the Supreme Court’s decisions to favour the government’s foreign friends and surrogates such as Waterville and Isofoton after the Supreme Court’s conclusive declarations and orders on the issue of estoppel, the little said about the government’s disingenuity on the matter the better.”

“I hope Ghanaians will wake up to the fact that this is not a White Paper under Article 280 of the Constitution, but a bogus and fraudulent NDC Manifesto White Paper masquerading as one pursuant to Article 280 of the Constitution,” he added.

In his view, this attempt by government also calls into grave question the preamble and solemn declaration and affirmation of the constitution to probity and accountability in the exercise of the Attorney General’s functions under Article 88 thereof.