Ghanaians appear to have been kept in the dark about the government’s receipt of a whopping £658,000 ($1.3million) from Mabey and Johnson as reparation to the administration and people of Ghana as part of a package of penalties, costs and confiscations amounting to a total of £6.6million.
The Chief Prosecutor of the M & J case, John Hardy, who is in the country on the invitation of the Danquah Institute (DI), says as far as he is concerned Ghana as a country has received the money.
Mr. Hardy met the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) Commissioner, Justice Emile Francis Short, yesterday for over one and half hours, Daily Guide learnt. He said he is well aware of the fact that officials and Ghana’s representatives at the country’s High Commission in the United Kingdom went for the reparation money somewhere in 2009 when the case came to a close in the UK.
He said he will therefore be surprised if anybody claims the money has not been received.He made this disclosure after delivering a paper on ‘International Corruption: How Ghana can collaborate with the United Kingdom and other countries to beat it’ at a forum organised by the Danquah Institute at the University of Ghana, Legon, on Wednesday.
Mr. Hardy, who has been described by some pro-NDC newspapers as a ‘half-baked’ lawyer for ostensibly making certain disclosures about the case since his arrival in the country, has therefore stressed the need for the Ghanaian government to pursue the issue further to its logical conclusion.
It is recalled that on October 10, 2009 Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Deputy Minister of Information - who is currently in Singapore - appeared on Joy FM’s current affairs programme News File and was categorical that Ghana was not going to accept any reparation from the UK court. Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa said, “Let me state unequivocally that we are not accepting any reparation”.
On the issue of the UK government’s non-cooperation with the CHRAJ, and for that matter the Ghanaian government, Mr. Hardy, who has extensive knowledge in international criminal law, advised the government to put in an official extradition request for the UK government to assist the country with the needed documentary evidence to either investigate or prosecute the Ghanaian officials whose names came up during the M & J trial.“But it does seem to me that if the channel of CHRAJ formally requests the material through the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the pressure should be brought to bear on the Serious Fraud Office to provide that material”, he emphasised.
That notwithstanding, Mr. Hardy noted that the prosecution’s opening notes are on the website of Serious Fraud Office of the UK and is therefore accessible by everybody.
For this reason, he noted that if the government indeed intends to investigate or prosecute the individuals involved, it could start by following these basic leads to acquire the necessary information and documentation.
Furthermore, Mr. Hardy stated that bribery of foreign public officials can affect a whole nation. For him, this is the most damaging of all the forms of bribery, since, according to him, it involves the subversion of elected ministers and appointed officials whose duty is to serve the public. “It therefore undermines the fabric of democracy and presents an insidious challenge to the rule of law”, he emphasised.
Like money laundering, to which it is directly related, in the sense that as soon as the public official receives a bribe he acquires the proceeds of crime, the international criminal law expert noted with emphasis, “Bribery of foreign public officials is a disease; a political disease, a social disease and cultural disease and an economic disease”.
He therefore stressed the need for an international action that focuses on making the acceptance of bribes intolerable everywhere and also making the offering of bribe to or the bribing of an overseas public official particularly unacceptable in countries where foreign companies typically trade.
Speaking on the theme ‘The International Dimensions of Corruption’, Prof. Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah also stressed the need for Ghana to have an independent public prosecutor, detached of any governmental control, as found under the current dispensation in which the Minister of Justice also acts as the Attorney-General.
Even with that, he believes that the Attorney-General can still cede some of its prosecutorial role to the CHRAJ to prosecute corrupt public officials. He believes this will go a long way to help the increasing incidence of corruption in the public service.
Article 88 of the 1992 Constitution states “(1) There shall be an Attorney-General of Ghana who shall be a Minister of State and the principal legal adviser to the Government”. Prof. Attafuah, who is also the Executive Director of the Justice and Human Rights Institute, emphasised that politicians and public officials who see public office as a platform for ending their personal poverty do so at the expense of the entire nation, and especially the vulnerable ones in society.
He thus noted it is imperative that the business sector develops and implements effective ethics and outlines measures that are independent of but harmonious with statutory arrangements to combat corruption by international businesses operating in developing countries. Under the current circumstance, he noted, many businesses and trade associations have established ethical codes for companies, managers and employees.
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