Former Deputy Energy Minister, John Jinapor has hinted that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and its Minority in Parliament are heading to court to force the termination of the scandalous US$ 500 million of a management concession of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) given to Power Distribution Service (PDS).
The Minority will be arguing facts around fundamental breaches in the deal, Mr Jinapor indicated.
“I’m not interested in fraud [but] I’m interested in the protection of EC’s assets…” the MP for Yapei Kusawgu Constituency explained during Joy FM’s Newsfile on Saturday
According to him, members on the Minority are determined to “pursue this matter to the logical conclusion” because “some people slept on the job. Some people did a great disservice to this country.”
The NDC will be holding a press conference on Tuesday, September 10, 2019, to expectedly reveal more damning issues around the fraudulent PDS deal.
So far, two detailed investigations have been conducted by both an independent forensic auditor based in Washington DC (FTI Consult) and a government probe team led by the Deputy Attorney General, Godfred Yeboah Dame.
While the government delegation concluded emphatically that the deal was marred by possible fraud and contractual breaches, the Washington based auditor was measured in its conclusions, saying it had not been able to talk to some critical players in the PDS deal in Qatar.
PDS was expected to provide a US$ 490 million payment securities for the ECG deal from a bank. The condition was curiously changed from a bank to an insurance company based in Qatar called AlKoot.
As it turned out, the authorising officer at AlKoot had granted the payment securities clandestinely without the knowledge of AlKoot’s Board. Yahaya Al Nouri reportedly forged documents and signatures to grant the payment securities which was scanned to PDS. No original copy of the payment security was given, yet the deal was pushed through for PDS.
“It is evidently clear that there is no valid Payment Security or demand guarantee issued by AlKoot in respect of any part of the obligations of PDS under the LAA and BSA…in light of the findings from the visit to ALKoot in Doha, it is our respectful view that there is no valid or enforceable demand guarantee issued by AlKoot in support of the LAA and BSA,” the government report signed by Godfred Dame concluded in the report prepared for the Akufo Addo administration which was forced to suspend the PDS deal in August.