Interview with Alfred Agbesi Woyome

The True Story behind Alfred Agbesi Woyome Judgment Debt Payment

…an exclusive interview with Alfred Agbesi Woyome by Africa Watch Magazine (Part 1)

WOYOME: NPP DESTROYED MY DOCUMENTS

Says he has a confidential memo that proves criminal intent

Q: There has been a fierce debate between the government and the opposition about the payment of a judgment debt to you. How are you doing under such intense heat?

A: If I did not know that the heat would rise, I would have been taken by surprise. I have studied the political terrain in stand the behavior of the politicians.

I also understand, since Ghana’s independence, what some groups of people like the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have done and what they can do.

I know, from the contents of an NPP confidential memo in my possession, why a legally awarded contract was cancelled. In that memo, it was stated that if the NPP should cancel our contract then it should marshal forces to defend the cancellation both nationally and internationally.

Only a fool will expect that the NPP will not do what they say they will do; so what they are doing is according to the contents of that memo.

That is why, as you can see, I am very much composed in this matter.

Q: Can you expatiate on the memo you are talking about, and when did it come into your possession, and what are the exact contents?

A: The memo is dated July 27, 2005. It was a cabinet memo written by Yaw Osafo Maafo, the then Minister for Youth and Sport, who also happened to be the former Finance Minister under Kufuor. He warned his cabinet colleagues of the Kufuor administration and the NPP about the consequences of what they were intending to do, by cancelling our legally awarded contract and giving the job to the Chinese.

If the nation wants the truth, I am prepared to submit myself to the EOCO, and the NPP members who are calling for my head must do the same because I believe they committed an organized crime.

We have been very meticulous in keeping every single record to show the intention and direction of the NPP government in cancelling the legally awarded contract given to us. But what convinces me that it is an organized crime is the memo, Osafo Maafo’s confidential memo to the cabinet.

Q: Are you sure the Kufuor administration and the NPP would deliberately plan to commit a crime?

A: They burnt some of the relevant documents supporting my case. You know when they cancelled the deal; we brought in a lawyer called Collins Russell from London to register our protest. We reminded the Kufuor administration about the law that says that a procurement authority must keep every documentation.

Q: From what you are saying, do you mean the NPP deliberately tampered with relevant documentation to make it difficult for former Attorney General Betty Mould Iddrissu to present a solid defense?

A: What the NPP was leaving power, they carried government documents with them and burnt the documents or shredded them, but I have kept copies of some of the documentation they burned, and other state agencies have also kept certain documentation and we made those copies available to the government. These things did not come because the then Attorney General, Betty Mould Iddrissu, just sat down and discuss with Alfred Woyome. Relevant institutions were asked for their comments and recommendations, and on the basis of that, Betty felt she had no choice but to go ahead and negotiate with me because she had no facts to stand on to defend the case in court.

We went to court, amended our writ to four percent of the overall contract that was terminated, which came up to GH¢105m, but Betty succeeded in negotiating it down, way down to approximately GH¢51m – that’s the figure we are pursuing. It was a compromise, we consented to the judgment and filed it; and since it was filed in the courts of Ghana, it became the judgment that exists now.

I heard some people say, “Oh, it is a default judgment”. What is my business there? You see, if you have circumstantial evidence, it leads to debate, but if you have hardcore evidence against you, then the wisest thing to do is to negotiate. This is the situation.

Q: The attorney general, Martin Amidu, has gone to court, seeking to reverse the judgment……….

A: There were some things within the NDC government, which were pushing the attorney general here and there, so he went and filed a weak defense, which was a mistake, and he can’t prove it.

He still can come to court and say he has found new evidence proving fraud, which I want him to do, because you can’t be in court and talk about other things, or be issuing statements full of innuendos.

Q: In a press statement issued this month, the attorney general, Martin Amidu, said “a colleague Minister of State, who perceived that my integrity and professionalism as a lawyer was a threat to the concealment of gargantuan crimes against the people of Ghana in which they might be implicated,” is trying to undermine him. Apparently he is referring to your case. How do you feel about it?

A: If you are the attorney general of the country and you fell that you have a fraud case to prove, prove it in court! You have the opportunity, and the opportunity is still there for you to prove it in court.

Instead of casting innuendos, if your predecessor has done something wrong, it is also evidence to carry into court and say in view of all that has gone on, here is the new evidence we’ve got. If you prove the fraud, the court will take me on.

Q: Before you do deeper into the technicalities of the issues at hand here, let’s consider the peripheral issues that have irked the Ghanaian public so much. One is the debate about the exact amount of judgment debt due to you. There are several figures making the rounds; can you clarify the exact amount, especially in light of the complex technicalities around the calculations?

A: Excuse me, but this amount that they are talking about is a result of the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction. You know two things I could have done to collect that amount of money exactly?

Q: What two things?

A: I could have refused to go to negotiation, and ordered my lawyers to go to court and garnished the account of the government of Ghana. The garnishee order would be taken, meaning that the government of Ghana would refuse to function; they would seize all its finances until that money was paid.

We could also have gone to London, gone to the Vulture Fund and said: “Here is my judgment, give me the money,” and the Vulture Fund could have given me the money and seized Ghana’s properties there, and Ghana’s would have ended up paying even double that amount of money.

But no, we didn’t do that, because it would have been unfair to the Ghanaian people. We wanted to take what is

Duly ours, balancing it together with the interests of the taxpayer, so we went for discussions, and afterwards, we all spoke about what was fair but what I presumed to be fair was unfair to some of the bankers supporting me.

Immediately after I collected the money, I had to pay the two banks involved almost GH¢17m and there was an other bank that I had to pay almost GH¢14m to, emanating from a certain amount of money that I had borrowed from them to pay to certain international bodies that were also going to take over my properties, so you will see that after something like this, you need to pay people to avoid the huge pressure that is coming down on you.

Q: So what is that figure exactly?

A: That figure is GH¢51,283,480.59, which is the principal in the first place; that was it. On October 5, 2010, GH¢17,094,493.50 was paid to me. This was in fulfillment of the court order. Then in 2011, there was this pretrial issue, where they withdrew the case for settlement so that they could pay the principal to avoid accrual of interest, which could have also been another financial loss. So the finance ministry came to an agreement with my legal team to truncate the rest, and the first tranche was GH¢10m, and then the next was paid on April 20, 2011, which was also GH¢10m, and then the one after, was paid on Oct. 4, 2011, which was GH¢14,188,987.06, all totaling GH¢51,283,480.57.

There are opportunities and avenues open to whoever feels that he is not comfortable with the judgment to challenge it in court. I expect that we should be paid the last tranche of the money (the judgment debt). I have heard people talk about the Auditor General’s report. I found it curious, so I went to see it, the finding that claimed that I had been paid so much money, was erroneously recorded. But elsewhere in the report, the recommendation was apt: It said “state officials, who caused this huge financial loss, should be surcharged”. And I agree with that.

The auditor general’s recommendation didn’t say that the beneficiaries of the judgment debt who had gone to court to defend their rights should massacred.

I also find it strange that the NPP still continues to subject a proper ruling of a competent court of law – the bedrock of our democracy – to public ridicule. What prevents them from going to court to prove a case of fraud? As private citizens, they can challenge the case in court. The issue here is, have we, Alfred Woyome and his group, obeyed the law?

As to how somebody feels, especially members of the NPP, that is not my concern. My concern is that the taxpayers’ money has been used unnecessarily in paying something that is duly due to my group and me. That is the question.

Q: What was your company, M-Powapak’s relationship with VAMED Engineering and Waterville during the bidding process? And do you have a written contract with the Government of Ghana?

A: You see, I have a company, M-powapak Togo-Sarl, where I am a director and owner. But M-powapak Ghana is not my company; I am just an alternate director. M-powapak Togo-Sarl presented certain things, and M-powapak Ghana also presented certain things, so we call it a consortium, whenever I am alternate director for M-powapak Ghana, I sign documentation to that effect. There are intricate relationships, which can only happen because of the intricate nature of the funding and the sources. People have to do A, B, C and because it was in a time that you must meet all timelines, it had implications. M-powapak represented VAMED in Ghana. A concurrent approval for the CAN 2008 projects was given to us. The procurement law, look for it, says immediately it reaches that concurrent approval, every official is obliged to make sure that there will be a consummation of the contract. It goes on further to state that, if you give (the concurrent approval) and you did not honor your side of the bargain, you are liable to some penalties. So the Kufuor government should have done their part, it is a common law, in that you cannot benefit from your own mistakes and inactions.

Therefore, if you give a concurrent approval, and you refuse to sign the contract, it is not my business and it’s not the business of M-powapak and VAMED.

The Agyeman Manu letter says that I am sending VAMED and Alfred Woyome to you and we are expecting a result, and that result demanded that we brought a term sheet, which we did, and that term sheet was analyzed and found to have concessional element exceeding the minimum requirement demanded by the HIPC Ghana IMF agreements. So that letter, Agyeman Manu’s letter, constitutes an agreement.

What the second stanza says is that you can not commit me, you can not do this or that. I am not the minister of finance, and VAMED is not an official agency of the government of Ghana. But in the first stanza, they were excepting a result, which we delivered, if we had stopped there, the government would have paid us some money.

So the point is this: we did not stop there. After cancelling other processes to which we had said would be given verbatim narrations, you stop at a certain point and say I want to do an international bid, a bid to which 400 local and international companies participate in, and you set the condition for the winning the bid, which is also captured in the Osafo Maafo memo. One of the condition is that you have to bring secured funding, it doesn’t mean term sheet or proposal, and it means the money must be in the bag.

Q: Did you bring some money in the bag?

A: You don’t carry such huge monies in trunks etc., and put it in the vault of Ghana. What happens is that you bring documentary financial instrument, so what I brought was a documentary financial instrument. And what were the characteristics of it? It was an offer letter, a letter of support from bank Austria, and it quoted copiously MIGA, which is part of the World Bank group, as being the guarantor of Ghana, and they said the bank Austria couldn’t it if the World Bank had not permitted them to do it. They then put in an expiry date, that alone is evidence, then the government set up a committee which was headed by the deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana, under the laws of procurement which is an entity under the procurement law, which means continuing fulfillment of the procurement act.

Regarding the funds from Bank Austria, a lender cannot give a HIPC country US$1.1billion alone, it would be too much of a risk. So what you do is to reduce the risk on the bank, you do syndication. So all the money had to be syndicated and put in an account before Bank Austria could write the cheque. The difficulty was Ghana’s HIPC status, and it meant they could only take funding of US$100million per annum. And even with concessional money, there was a quantum Ghana could take.

Again the biggest disaster is that the stadium projects did not qualify for soft loans. So we needed to do certain things. This committee (the financial committee of the Procurement Board) invited me, Alfred Woyome, on the basis of the Agyeman Manu letter because VAMED had by then assigned its rights to Waterville. So they couldn’t invite VAMED to sit there with me, they invited Alfred Woyome as an entity and I appeared before them, after which they made certain conclusions and said, “because of this short period of time, if you have money you can go ahead”.

Ato Esuman was there. O.B Amoah was there. Osafo Maafo’s was there. It was in Osafo Maafo’s officethat he announced to me that our consortium – Alfred Woyome, M-powapak and Waterville – had won the bid. He enumerated the challenges the nation faced, especially time constraint.

So we came to the conclusion that there should be a bridge financing, which Waterville duly accessed from Merchant Bank. If you look at the contract they signed, Merchant Bank’s managing director signed as a witness for Waterville.

After you have signed an MOU and have worked with your own money, they just set up a committee headed by somebody and tell you to stop work and disappear.

So, as I have always said regarding the contract, we didn’t have a written contract with the government. I am not a company, but I am an entity, a human being can be an entity. The argument that we didn’t have a contract is pedestrian. There are several examples over there where entities in terms of a single person, has done a lot of things for the government of Ghana and the finance ministry, which have been paid for by the government.

Q: When VAMED transferred its rights to Waterville, what stature did your role assume with Waterville, given the fact that you were originally dealing with VAMED through M-powapak?

A: You see with Waterville, we had various agreements prior to the bid. VAMED transferred its rights prior to the bid and Waterville’s last letter that it wrote in 2010 explained it completely as to what my role was, theirs was in the infrastructure and I was on the financial engineering side, so that one is explicit, and documented.

Q: in a letter dated Nov. 20, 2009, an attorney for Waterville Holdings, Kwami Tetteh, wrote to the attorney general, saying “Waterville did engage M-powapak to provide Waterville with financial engineering services but the relationship was terminated by a Termination Agreement dated 25th November 2006. Powapak’s claims against Waterville were fully settled and acknowledged in the Agreement. Therefore neither M-powapak nor Woyome has any claim against Waterville …. we must add that the stadia contracts were contracted between Waterville and the Government of Ghana; neither Powapak nor Woyome was a party. It is therefore wrongful for Mr. Woyome or Powapak to make a claim in a contract of which neither is a part.” How do you respond to this letter from Waterville with whom you say you are standing in their stead?

A: This letter predates all other agreements that have been signed by Waterville and me. Kwami Tetteh was lawyer for Waterville, Kwami Tetteh is referring to a third scenario.

Q: What is the third scenario?

A: The third scenario was when the Chinese came into Ghana and the Chinese said, look, we cannot do Accra and Kumasi, after the concurrent approval has been allowed to die. They said they needed flat land and all kinds of things, and then the government, desperately now, knowing very well that Waterville had all these drawings and everything, these drawings I was part of, and this investment I was part of, but it is not based on that. I am talking about real cost of a lot of things, when Waterville started their own journey, about dealing with the government, they went and compromised their stand on the concurrent approval, I didn’t compromise my stand, they went in to get an agreement from the government of Ghana.

Q: Is this after the government had abrogated the concurrent contract with the Woyome/M-powapak/Waterville?

A: No, they wrote a letter that had no legal effect anyway. Osafo Maafo, after that, came to say, in fact he wrote to VAMED, and VAMED referred it to Waterville. Thereafter, they (Waterville), wanted to talk to the government of Ghana in order to do the Kumasi and Accra sports stadiums. In the light of the already arranged bid for bridge financing, they said they could access the money. That was the trick.

Agyeman Manu again wrote another letter to Waterville USA to look for money. Waterville USA was now caught up with Alfred Woyome, they operated from my office in the USA, and we raised money again, and it was over 120million euros through HSBC.

Thereafter, based on the Agyeman Manu letter upon which monies were raised, they sent Dr. Akoto Osei and one Yvonne Quansah, to tell HSBC that the project was no longer a priority. HSBC then wrote to Waterville USA, not Alfred Woyome, that they were not interested to continue again, but if the government of Ghana were still interested, they would go on. So this resulted in Waterville owing Alfred Woyome money, not the government of Ghana, so he was talking about Waterville and Alfred Woyome in the third scenario is separate because I had a contract with Waterville; M-powapak also had a contract with them, so we had to sit down to terminate some of those contracts in order to remove some of the confusions there.

Certain monies were paid to M-powapak to get out, and there was a balance. We agreed mutually that if they go and do their work on the contract with the government of Ghana, they would pay me my balance, which was almost 8million euros,

When the NDC came into office, I saw that the money Waterville was trying to claim was far too much so I wrote to the attorney general about it. That triggered lawyer Tetteh’s response, after which we called a roundtable meeting at the attorney general’s office. That day the attorney general had a lot of attorneys present, about six of them. The minister of finance was there too with his legal department. Kwami Tetteh and Waterville were there, I was there, and there was the minister of youth and sports and the project consultants, everybody was there. We talked about our matter, Waterville now conceded that they owed me money. They also conceded that they did their work, and I did the financial engineering. So it was agreed there for everybody to pursue each one’s own thing. The government finally paid Waterville, so they fulfilled the payments of Alfred Woyome.

Now, since our court judgment, the matter regarding Woyome’s relationship with Waterville is being quoted deliberately to confuse issues, but the matter that prompted the letter written by Waterville’s lawyer has nothing to do with the government; it has something to do with me and Waterville, not the government.

Q: To get the issues very clear here; we had a first scenario of which you are claiming a judgment debt that is being paid to you right now, and you have another scenario where Waterville contracted you to do some financial engineering. So now what are the distinctions between this first scenario and other scenarios?

A: The first scenario ended with a concurrent approval for Woyome/M-powapak/Waterville, for the Sekondi and Temale stadia projects and the government sacked everybody and brought in the Chinese. The government then went to Barclays Bank and borrowed money, at commercial rate, and gave it to the Chinese to do the job. But Waterville was also part to the rights in the construction of the Accra and Kumasi stadia. The Kufuor government saw that Waterville was working with me on that and the cabinet cancelled that job too. When they did that, it became two separate scenarios. So the government’s abrogation happened two times.

And now the NPP is telling the public a different story.

The borrowing of that money from Barclays Bank for the bridge financing resulted in Barclays recalling its loan because the government could not repay the money. How could a government go and borrow at a variable interest rate from Barclays Bank at about 10% at that time, whose repayment started from day one with no grace period? It was the NDC government that came to pay all that money. It might interest you to know that the accrued interest was over US$100million. So the NPP can’t just go and throw mud around, let’s go down there and ask questions.

Q: which of the scenarios are you really claiming your judgment debt from?

A: The first scenario dovetailed into the second scenario. It was the same continuing process. That is why some people are questioning why I am claiming judgment from 2001 to 2011.

Q: In fact, why was your tender to construct stadium linked to other major building projects, such as hospital, a cobalt 60 plant, etc.?

A: Companies were given the opportunity to present proposals and the proposals that were to be presented were to include the other building projects you have just mentioned because we wanted to turn Ghana into a sports tourism destination, so the proposal needed to be very comprehensive and all-encompassing.

It was also part of the terms of which we were able to raise the amount that we needed to raise from the World Bank. Mind you, it was a MIGA guaranteed project. All of these facilities qualified Ghana as a sports tourism destination. It was the question of the attractiveness of the package we were presenting.

Q: The NPP, via its national chairman Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, has said while it was in power it had no proof that you had made any money available, especially the one billion Euros which forms the basis of your claim for financial engineering services rendered to the government. Is that not true?

A: As I explained to you, his claim is pedestrian and calculated and I don’t know why he should be talking like that. If it is not true, let the Ghanaian people go to EOCO and see. For on what basis did the NPP government give a concurrent approval? Then the Bank of Ghana committee must also be arrested if there was no documentary proof, because you said secured funding; and why should you recommend a deal if the thing didn’t involve secure funding? What is he talking about?

Q: President Atta Mills has said he did not know about your affairs, and as such, he did not authorize any payments to you. Is that the case? Did you have any direct dealings with him regarding your case?

A: You see, I did not deal with President Mills, and President Mills is not the court of this country. I went to the attorney general and presented my case, and the court gave an order for payment, and that order was an explicit one; you and anybody can read the judgment for yourselves.

So when you go and ask the president whether he authorized any payments to me or not, what do you think the president will tell you? He cannot take any decision saying, “don’t pay a court judgment”. If he does that, what kind of democracy will we have?

So my understanding of the president’s statement is plain: “I did not authorize any payments; the authorization was by a court order.” If they did not do it, they would have been in contempt of court. And I would have pursued it to that end.

Now what the NDC did, which I applaud, is that they just didn’t stop at the court order, they went to Parliament and presented it as a budgetary estimate of this country, which was duly approved by the Parliament of Ghana in compliance with the court order. It is a court order, so please, when handling these matters, I would believe that everybody should look at it very well and relocate it into the judgment of the court and educate themselves about what the judgment said, and what procedures were followed, in that situation, and we would all be doing ourselves and this country a good thing.

Q: President Atta Mills and his government want EOCO to investigate the circumstances surrounding your claim. The NPP thinks that will amount to a cover-up by the government because you had earlier called on EOCO to intervene. Why EOCO?

A: Can you tell me any other state organization that can investigate this matter? I think the president Atta Mills’ desire to use the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) to investigate the matter is appropriate, appropriate in the sense that within the laws of the country an organized economic crime has been committed by those who cancelled the lawfully awarded contracts and in the process caused that huge loss to the state.

I believe that the crime emanates from the NPP confidential memo – they planned to plunge the nation into debt; they even discussed in the memo what to do to win public opinion after the plunge. It is an organized crime.

Q: What about the Public Account Committee of Parliament, can’t they look into this matter, as has been suggested?

A: What did the Auditor General say? His report named people who have caused the huge loss to the state; it didn’t say businessmen like Alfred Woyome have caused this loss and so they should be surcharged. It said government officials caused the loss and they are the ones to be surcharged. And who is responsible for surcharging?

I have been to the EOCO on three occasions, I have given everything to them; I told them, we are having a court case, if you find culpability, please give it to the AG’s department to change their defense – from being a mistake to fraud. I mean, how much more do you want an individual to do? You know my interest in this?

Q: No.

A: It must never again happen in Ghana. Therefore I will pursue matters to the logical conclusion, where government officials will not adopt political bias in dealing with a business community of Ghana.

Q: Do you think the NPP has something to hide by declining the EOCO invitations?

A: Now the funny thing is the NPP says that they should send this case to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament; it is laughable. I had a debate with Kufuor’s former Chief of Staff (Kojo Mpiani) on a local radio station where he called for a public enquiry into our matter. I reminded him that the nation had just come out of another public inquiry the Ghana at 50 inquiry – and everybody in the country knew the legal technicalities it posed, and Mpiani was now trying to deceive himself that Ghanaians were that stupid to go for another public inquiry.

Now some people are hanging on what I said: “He said so and the President too has said so, and it has led to an EOCO investigation and they don’t believe in EOCO”. EOCO was the same institution that they used when it was called the Serious Fraud Office – just a change of name.

It is the same SFO officers who investigated matters when the NPP was in power, which led to the prosecution of some people.

Good, they want the Public Account Committee of Parliament, whose chairman was a member of Kufuor’s cabinet that caused all the mayhem I have described to you.

The NPP members have changed from about 100 positions since this thing happened; first they maintained a position that they didn’t know me, then moved to a position where I was an NPP member, etc, etc.

Q: You appear to have had some kind to relationship with the NPP then?

A: I had a relationship with officials of the government of Ghana run by NPP. Look, I was here as vice honorary consul of Austria to Ghana. During Ghana’s 50th anniversary celebrations, I represented the Austrian president. I was given all facilities accorded to all presidents, in fact I was in the company of all the presidents in the Castle there, and spoke. They were dealing with me, diplomatically and as a businessman.

I did not go to NPP government to solicit for contracts, never! They came to me to solicit my help. Jake Obetsebi Lamptey invited me to help the government build hospitals: Sokakope, Begoro, etc, and Kufuor sent Osafo Maafo to meet with me in Vienna, during which I assisted them in getting some funding. There are issues about that one too, which I have asked EOCO to start investigating. I didn’t go to them, they came to me. It will surprise you to know that at one point, I analyzed a data that struck oil, they took it and gave it to somebody else, that led to Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie (Sir John) being sacked as deputy managing director of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) because he and others were working with me. Everything was taken from Sir John, and he came to me from grace to grass. And if it is because of me that he lost all that, won’t I buy him a car to facilitate his life? I did it, and more besides.

Q: What then did Sir John mean when they asked him about you and he responded that you were “part of the NPP fraternity”?

A: He knew about the UP issues, about my family and all that, but all along, they knew I was a social democrat. That should tell you about the way they treated me.

You know, when I went to Libya to lobby for the CAN 2008 hosting rights, which I succeeded in doing, when I returned, the government claimed that I had collected money from Gadhafi to give to ex-President Jerry Rawlings to stage a coup d’état in 2002/2003, and they searched my house, searched my mother’s house, they came to search the Austrian consulate, which I allowed them to do. It was Akufo Addo, the NPP’s current presidential candidate, who wrote that instruction to Francis Poku to search my house and other properties. Later apologies came from all quarters. So if you knew I had a strong relationship with Rawlings, how could I be a member of the NPP fraternity?

Q: Are you a registered member of the NDC?

A: I am. When I resigned as vice honorary consul of Austria to Ghana, I helped my fraternity to come to power. Is that also wrong?

Q: It is being speculated that you are one of President Mills’ key financiers, a kingpin and a bankroller of the NDC. Is that true?

A: Everybody can belong to an association, and everybody contributes, the quantum is not the issue, it is your commitment to the whole thing. I won’t deny that I contribute to the cause of the NDC; no member of the NDC will deny that. If that makes me a financier, so be it.

Q: Amidst the debates, it was hinted that the Bank of Ghana was going to freeze your accounts. Has that been done?

A: I can tell you by the EOCO law, that before they go into an investigation, especially when you are going to be part of the subject matter, your account would be frozen.

A citizen of this country, Akyena Brentuo, had presented a petition to them, and on that basis, they froze my accounts. We challenged that basis because you cannot go and retry a court issue, what you can do is to ask me to assist in the investigation, so we have challenged that one in court.

Q: Are your bank accounts active as you try to sort out the legal interpretations?

A: No, so I am hurt. Then it may mean the level of hurt and the level of reputational issues that are involved, we will bring all these as evidence in court, and they will measure it see what happens when one action leads to the other.

Q: What is the scope of your business interests in Ghana?

A: All I can say is that my business is legitimate; my sources of funds are legitimate. I have worked as a diplomat for EU countries, I work closely with the Americans, and for people like that. I am a crusader, an anti-corruption crusader, and I believe in expressing rights. I believe that it is not wrong for me to tell people about my political beliefs.

Q: Is it not risky mixing business and politics in Ghana?

A: Go back to the Greek philosophers; anybody that says that he is not interested in politics is called a fool. If my tax money runs the government, I should be interested in how they use my tax money.

Don’t businessmen vote? Don’t they have a mind of their own? Don’t they have a conscience of their own? Do you believe in the freedom of conscience? If you do, you can only express that through a political grouping that you can identify with, therefore this kind of hypocrisy of a businessman not being a political animal, is fallacy. The only thing is that, let’s do the system in such a way that people will not judge you for your political coloration or your belief, in order to determine whether you can win a contract. We have beyond that.