Perpetrators of nepotistic Agyapa 'robbery' will be punished – Asiedu Nketia warns

The General Secretary for the leading opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Johnson Asiedu Nketia also known as general mosquito has warned that his party will hold accountable anyone who played a role in the Agyapa Royalties deal.

“Anyone who may have played any role in the “shady” Agyapa Royalties scam, which is fraught with fraud, thievery, nepotism, and cronyism”, will not go scot-free in a future Mahama government, the NDC’s General Secretary stated.

Addressing the media at the party’s 16th weekly media briefing, Asiedu Nketia added: “We have long held the position that the Agyapa deal was fraught with illegalities and driven by corruption, cronyism and sheer greed, all in furtherance of the state-capture agenda of President Akufo-Addo”.

Touching on the dealings of the Special Prosecutor, he said the recent verdict of Martin Amidu on the deal after his anti-corruption risk assessment, vindicates the NDC’s position that it was “a corrupt deal, cooked within the corridors of power for the benefit of a few greedy family relatives of President Akufo-Addo, at the expense of the state”.

According to the NDC, the “whole Agyapa deal is daylight robbery” as found by the Special Prosecutor, which said the transaction processes and Mandate Agreement violated the Public Procurement Act, the Financial Management Act, and the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, hence null and void.

“As a matter of fact, the processes leading to the transaction agreements and Mandate Agreement were shady, opaque and fraught with procurement rigging, stonewalling, fraud, statutory and constitutional breaches,” Amidu said.

For Asiedu Nketia, “the valuation of our gold royalties and transaction agreements that President Akufo-Addo and his corrupt New Patriotic Party approved was a rip-off and an affront to the sovereignty of our dear nation”.

“The NDC is appalled by the refusal of President Akufo-Addo to crack the whip on the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, who supervised this daylight heist, and his Deputy, Charles Adu Boahen, who fraudulently signed the Mandate Agreement when he had no locus to do so under our laws.

“It is sad but unsurprising, that these government officials who are responsible for the shady Agyapa deal, which has occasioned a huge financial loss to the nation, are still at post. In any serious country, Ken Ofori-Atta and Charles Adu Boahen would have been suspended pending criminal investigations or under criminal prosecution by now. Sadly, in our case, President Akufo-Addo has decided to shield these corrupt officials from punishment, as he usually does,” Asiedu Nketia noted.

He, thus, warned that the next NDC government will not let the matter go unpunished.

“We must serve notice that this Agyapa scam, like other similar corrupt acts of the Akufo-Addo government, will not go unpunished. We have just about twenty-seven days to vote for change like the Americans have done.

“The new government of His Excellency John Dramani Mahama and the NDC Insha Allah, shall investigate this Agyapa robbery and punish all the culprits and masterminds behind it through the Operation Sting crusade. Let it be known that crime has no expiry date. It is just a matter of time,” he stated.