The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has today provided some explosive details in the Power Distribution Services (PDS) scandal indicating that President Akufo-Addo as the man in the thick of the carefully hatched scandal.
According to the NDC, the President, members of his government and his family deliberately set up the agreement to violate Parliament’s requirement for bank guarantee and then turned round to use the anomaly to bully the PDS partners into abandoning their shares.
The shares would then be picked up by cronies and paper companies who would front for the President and members of his family in the 25-year duration of the questionable agreement.
It was when the PDS partners refused to be scared into abandoning their shares that the Government suspended the contract in the name of fraudulent breaches on the part of the PDS.
Johnson Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary of the NDC, today told journalists that the President’s attempt at the hostile takeover of PDS shares was part of a grand agenda by Akufo-Addo, his family and cronies to perpetrate State capture.
“Their plan was to use the public outrage over the accusation to blackmail and bully the original shareholders to get in line. But the firecracker they launched has turned into a thermonuclear bomb that has exposed their wicked greed,” Mr. Asiedu Nketia said.
According to him, Finance Ken Ofori-Atta, who is also the President’s cousin, was the hatchet man for the job of using virtual blackmail to force the PDS partners to abandon their shares in what is arguably a serious and direct indictment of the President.
Ofori-Atta, he explained made his first shrewd move after the government had suspended the PDS agreement, writing to Akoto-Ampaw, a long-time friend of the President and a work colleague from the President’s law firm; Akufo-Addo, Prempeh and Co, to put together a Special Purpose Vehicle to consolidate the 51% shares handed to Ghanaian partners of the PDS.
Ofori-Atta, Mr. Asiedu Nketia said, issued the instruction even though he has no such locus in a bid to capture the shares down for the taking of Akufo-Addo family members and cronies.
“I am sure you must have seen a rather strange letter from Hon. Ken Ofori Atta to Lawyer Akoto Ampaw, a senior partner at the President’s law firm who is described in the letter as “Chairman of the Negotiation Committee”. In this letter, the Finance Minister directed Mr. Akoto Ampaw to consolidate the 51% Ghanaian shareholding under a so-called Special Purpose Vehicle to allow for other so-called Ghanaian investors to acquire shares in PDS.
“For the three original shareholders – GTS Power Limited, Santa Power Limited, and TG Energy Solutions Limited – this meant surrendering their shares to the new entity. The Finance Minister justified this directive on the grounds that it would protect and preserve the indigenous ownership stake in PDS.
“If we may ask, what is Ken Ofori-Atta’s locus and authority to give such a directive? Is he a shareholder, a beneficial owner or a conduit through which the President seeks to capture the electricity sector for personal benefit?
“We are convinced without a shadow of a doubt that the needless, baseless and illegal attempt by Ken Ofori Atta to restructure the shareholding of PDS is nothing but a well-calculated attempt by President Akufo-Addo and his relatives to appropriate the 51% Ghanaian shareholding in PDS for themselves with the objective of taking control of Ghana’s Power Distribution sector for the next twenty (20) years – up to 2039.
“We are reliably informed that the three original shareholders were subsequently required to dilute their respective stake in this newly formed Special Purpose Vehicle.
“Per this arrangement, they would collectively see their original 51% stake in PDS reduced to a paltry 11%. The remainder of the shares is to be apportioned to cronies of the President as agents who would hold the shares in trust for him and his family.
“According to our unimpeachable sources, the original Ghanaian shareholders rebelled, threatened and refused to participate in this charade. It is this defiance that outraged the Akufo-Addo faction and occasioned the suspension of the PDS Concession with the hope that the resulting pressure would force the compliance of the original shareholders,” Asiedu Nketia said.
From highlights of the investigation presented to the media at a press conference today, the NDC revealed that the dubious change of Bank Guarantee to an Insurance guarantee by the PDS partners was deliberately set up by President Akufo-Addo.
And the set up was aimed to lead to the situation where it was used as an excuse to abrogate the concession when the PDS partners refused to be bullied out.
Quoting the investigation by FTI into the scandal at the request of MiDA which had been pressured by the US Government to probe the scandal, the NDC General Secretary noted that top-level government officials, including Vice President Bawumia were involved in the alleged dubious setup.
The PDS scandal has become a huge albatross on the necks of the Akufo Addo administration as a constant stream of evidence emerge that increasingly pin the scandal on a direct scheme by individuals in the government.