Revealed! How Ken Ofori-Atta’s Private Company Hijacked GHC10m Covid-19 Insurance For Health Workers

Whatsup News can report on details of the fresh scandal that has hit the Akufo-Addo administration which virtually gifting Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta’s Enterprise Life Insurance a whopping GHC 2.4 million out of the GHC 10 million insurance package allocated to frontline health personnel fighting the deadly COVID-19 fight.

Ken Ofori-Atta, who is the President’s nephew and the one responsible for disbursing the funds, practically used a ghost company to land the contract, leading the Minority in Parliament to raise serious red flags about conflict of interest and state capture of COVID-19 funds for personal gains.

“…Nana Akufo Addo should be aware that his primary responsibility is to contain a public health pandemic and not to profit out of it, even for purposes of a friend or family. That is not the essence of governance,” the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrissutold told journalists today.

Undercover investigations reveal that out of the GHC 10 million, Ken Ofori-Atta’s company has pocketed GHC 2.3 million as “commission” to the ghost company used by Enterprise Life to j=hijack the insurance package of Ghanaians health workers through the backdoor.

Enterprise, which is owned by Ken Ofori-Atta and his wife, was sole-sourced for the contract by the government in which Ofori-Atta serves as Finance Minister. But even damning, Enterprise used the services of what appears to be a ghost company as middle agent to evidently cover its tracks, the investigations by Whatsup News and a team of other investigators revealed.

The ghost company is called AP&L- a family company also owned by a group of individuals linked to the administration. AP & L is owned by one Alfred Ofori-Kuraga, the former Managing Director of GLICO Insurance; Lydia Lariba Bawa, a former executive at the National Insurance Commission (NIC) and one Prince Ofori-Kuraga. Together, their First names formed the acronym for the company.

The company was formed under questionable circumstances. Even though it was registered at the Registrar General’s Department, the company’s incorporation does not exist in the database of the Department.

Yet, the company has landed juicy insurance consultancy contracts with major state corporations like BOST, the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), the Volta River Authority (VRA), the Ghana Cocoa Board and the State Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).

Our investigations have revealed that this company has been the de-facto deal broker for the Finance Minister’s Enterprise Insurance company.

On 5^th April 2020, when Ghana was in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, President Akufo-Addo announced that an insurance package had been arranged for frontline health personnel with each health worker allegedly entitled to Ghc350, 000 of insurance cover for the dangerous fight against COVID-19.

Exactly nine (9) days after President Akufo Addo made his announcement, an April 14, 2020 memo from Enterprise Life confirmed that Enterprise had already been paid the Ghc10, 309,919.94 by the end of April. Per the memo, and that it had set aside some GHC 2.32 million for itself in commissions through its broker, AP&L Consultants Limited.

“Your kind approval is needed for the payment of Ghc2, 319,731.99 as commission due to the above-mentioned broker for the group life policy cover for health personnel and allied professionals attending to the Corona Virus (Covid-19) pandemic,” the memo written by Enterprise head of Corporate Risk/Relations at Enterprise Life, Daniella Asah, said.

There was none of the dozens of major insurance companies in Ghana involved in the transaction which conveniently went to the Finance Minister’s company without any known bidding process or an official procurement trail. The Finance Minister is incidentally the sole authority tasked to disburse those funds. 

Investigators have said that the award of the contract solely to Enterprise Life is questionable, especially so when it was sole-sourced. But then, it also emerged that AP&L was not only a middleman for Enterprise Life, but has since the advent of the Akufo-Addo government, gained a number of big government entities as clients, including the above-mentioned state enterprises.

AP&L’s physical address is listed as House No. 43-44, Community 25, Tema. The company has an active website. On the website, Lydia Lariba Bawa, is listed as a “Co-Founder” of the company while Alfred Ofori Kurago is listed as “managing consultant.” 

Alfred Ofori Kurago, Romeo Bugyei and Lydia Lariba Bawa are listed as Directors, while Alfred Ofori Kurago and Prince Ofori-Kurago are listed as shareholders.

AP&L was incorporated in June 2017, in the first year of the Akufo-Addo government. It has since then grown to be the de-facto insurance broker for almost all government agencies.

Lariba, who is now a Director of the company was the one who issued the company its brokerage license in 2017. She did so while serving as the Commissioner of the National Insurance Commission where former President John Mahama had appointed her to.

While Lariba was the NIC boss, her husband, a staunch NPP man, was also working as the Managing Director of GLICO Life Insurance, a company that is known to be deeply entangled with the NPP government of Akufo-Addo.

As head of the NIC, Lariba cleverly feigned not being part of AP&L, as it would have immediately triggered a conflict of interest alarms. She allowed her husband and their son, Prince, to be shareholders. Then after issuing the company its brokerage license, she left the NIC in 2017. Immediately after leaving the NIC job, she went to the Registrar General’s Department to have the list of directors for AP&L changed to include her good self. 

By this time, her husband had also left GLICO and joined the family company. However, the new list of directors for the AP&L was never returned to the Registrar General’s Department, effectively ghosting the company in the database of the Registrar General’s department. This way, it is hard to trace the company even though it is operating as a registered firm.

According to investigators, this ghosting explains why in the banking documents of the company, Lariba and her husband, Alfred are listed as the only directors.