Fallout from the ?Hotel Kufuor? Affair ...

Ongoing investigations by ?Ghana Palaver? into the ?Hotel Kufuor? Affair have landed this paper a journalistic bonanza, a ?scoop?, as they call it in the profession ? what appears to be the intricacies and the whole strategy of how the NPP as a political party is financed!

Whilst checking into the role of the Prudential Bank and the National Investment Bank (NIB) in the financing of ?Hotel Kufuor?, ?Ghana Palaver? encountered many garrulous officials in the two banks and other public and private sector institutions who were eager to tell what they know about what they know but who were not so eager to be identified since that would most likely cost them their jobs.

The story as put together by ?Ghana Palaver? goes like this:-

That Prudential Bank was selected by ?Chief? Kufuor as the lead Bank of the consortium to finance ?Hotel Kufuor? was not by chance. Prudential Bank was the Bank that largely financed the NPP in both its 2000 and 2004 election campaigns.

One time Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Mr. J. S. Addo, who is a major shareholder in Prudential Bank, is a long-time friend of the Kufuor family, a fact confirmed by Presidential Press Secretary Mr. Kwabena Agyepong in his interview with the ?Daily Guide? newspaper, but which he was subsequently prevailed upon to deny.

As pay back, once the NPP won the elections, the Minister of Finance was made to direct that all donor funds in all banks, which were lodged mostly at Ecobank, should be transferred to Prudential Bank. Bank charges and other commissions earned on these alone reportedly ran into millions of dollars.

The civil servant who was used to issue these directives is one Mr. James Quarshie of the Ministry of Finance, an old boy of Oda Secondary School who did his sixth form at St. Augustine?s Secondary School and who operated as the errand boy of then Finance Minister Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo.

Mr. James Quarshie, who had previously been brought from the MDPI to the Ministry of Finance by the NDC Minister of the Ministry, Mr. Kwame Peprah, became the anti-NDC hatchet man who teleguided all the persecution and harassment of ex-NDC officials in their alleged financial deals, including Kwame Peprah himself.

From the then Ministry of Trade and Industry, the then Minister, Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku, also similarly directed for all donor funds in the sector to be transferred to Prudential Bank.

?Ghana Palaver? learnt that Mr. J. S. Addo is linked in his financial dealings with Mr. E. N. Omaboe, also known as Nana Wereko Ampem, and with Professor F. A. Sai, one of the NPP kingpins at the Castle whose wife is the Head of the Office of Accountability also at the Castle and whose daughter Ms. Oboshie Sai has also recently been appointed the Deputy Chief of Staff, also at the Castle.

Mr. Omaboe?s son, Mr. Nortey Omaboe, also allegedly owns 20% shares in Prudential Bank, and it was through him that the deal to have the donor funds transferred to Prudential Bank was passed.

Mr. D. K. C. Gyimah, the Kufuor-appointed Managing Director of the NIB and Chairman of the UDS Council who recently gained notoriety for falsely using a security scare to cancel an Honorary Doctorate award ceremony for former President Jerry John Rawlings, was also identified to us as the ?point man? in the financial sector. He handles private financial and investment matters for the NPP as counterpart to Mr. James Quarshie who handles public sector finance and investment matters for the party, in flagrant violation of his position as a civil servant who is required to be neutral and non-partisan.

Between the two of them, they have the mandate to work for the NPP to take over and control the economic and financial power of the country so that added to the political power they already have, and their unholy alliance with some Churches and sections of the media, the party will run the country like a Mafia.

?Ghana Palaver? is working on further information that keep coming in and will fill readers in, in due course.

Stay tuned.