We gave contract out of sympathy - Mpiani

Former Chief of Staff, Kwadwo Mpiani has told Citi FM that an energy contract signed between the former Government and the Former Deputy British High Commissioner to Ghana, Craig Murray was done as a humanitarian favour to help Mr Murray deal with his financial constraints.

Mr Mpiani says Mr Murray came lamenting to former President John Kufuor about his financial difficulties and virtually groveled for a contract to save him from bankruptcy in his home country, Britain.

Mr Mpiani confessed that an energy contract was thus signed between the Government of Ghana and Mr Murray’s company, Atholl, as a favour.

“He came to see President Kufuor about difficulties he was facing; he had been sacked by his government and his newly wedded wife was pregnant at that time and if he doesn’t get anything doing he would be declared bankrupt in his country so he came to see the president for support…this was the time we were looking critically at the energy sector in this country and he came in and said he could supply these turbines or generators and we talked to the ministry of energy on his behalf to see if they could help.” He said.

Mr Murray, in a recent article on his website, chronicled a number of corruption allegations in a number of contracts signed between Ghana and energy companies such as Balkan and Zakhem.

In that same article, Mr Murray admits he is the Chairman of several companies, including Atholl Energy. He said Atholl had a contract with the NPP government which has been honoured by the NDC government, because the company carried out its work “diligently and honestly.”

Mr Mpiani however discredits Mr Murray’s apparent selflessness in the manner he appears to be pushing the anti-corruption crusade against Balkan and Zakhem.

“When I met Craig and he was talking about people, about countries, about his own government and I realized that this is somebody who thinks that everybody else is wrong except him…he was behaving like a person who was so much concerned about Ghana and therefore went round to see what was going wrong to enable him report on that but that was not so.”