Ofori-Atta Claims Corruption Risk Assessment On Agyapa Was A Figment Of Amidu’s Imagination

Re-nominated Minister of Finance-designate, Ken Ofori-Atta, today dismissed the corruption risk assessment by resigned Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu as a pack of conjecture.

While facing the Appointments Committee of Parliament, Ofori-Atta who many expect to be rejected because of his ubiquity to corruption scandals and especially, his central role in the Agyapa Mineral Royalties scandal, claimed Amidu’s report was a figment of his own imagination.

And Amidu’s supposed conjecture was a disservice to Ghana’s Democracy. “Conjectures [in Amidu’s report] are inimical to growth, and it does not help the kind of freedom of policy orientation and innovation that we require for this country to grow,” Ofori-Atta fired.

He also repeated the discredited claim that Amidu had not given him the opportunity to input his response as far as the corruption risk assessment report was concerned.

“For such a report to be put out in the public without us or myself as Minister of Finance having a chance to discuss it, is a disservice to our democracy,” he told Parliament’s Appointment Committee Thursday.

It would be recalled that the corruption risk assessment on the Agyapa deal by Amidu had thrown up many instances of corrupt and lawless actions by Ofori-Atta.

According to Amidu, Ofori-Atta had acted together with the disgraced former head of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), Adjenim Boateng Adjei, to rig a bid so that his company, Data Bank would be made local partner to Imara Corporate, a South African company that had been used to front for Data Bank as Transaction Advisor for the Agyapa deal.

In the shocking details, Ofori-Atta as Finance Minister also got the Bank of Ghana to launder money to a supposed wing of Imara in Botswana as part of the shadiness around the deal.

Then, when Amidu was writing the report, Ofori-Atta had leveraged on his personal friendship and visited him at home in an apparent attempt to get him to shelve the report.

Meanwhile, throughout Amidu’s work, he had asked Ofori-Atta’s Finance Ministry several times to furnish his office with documents and information on the deal, including the success fee that he had decided to pay his company, Data Bank and the fronting partner, Imara Corporate Finance.

An obscurantist Ken Ofori-Atta had used every dirty trick in the book to ensure that Amidu did not have the information he wanted. However, when Amidu decided to publish the report he had authored President Akufo-Addo, tried to get him not to publish it insisting he must include a belated response Ofori-Atta had written.

Interestingly, Amidu had made it clear that the work he did was a corruption risk assessment and that after satisfying himself that there was the likelihood of corruption, he was going to then move on and start criminal investigations.

Ofori-Atta would have had the opportunity to present his response during that subsequent investigation, however Amidu started getting threats from the government. And safter former President Rawlings, whom Amidu had given a first cut of the report had suddenly died, Amidu apparently saw a connection with the report and resigned, fleeing to the UK.

The resigned Special Prosecutor would later describe President Akufo-Addo as the “mother serpent of corruption.”

“I do not feel that we broke any rule and I think the Attorney General will be able to give you a firm assessment of that,” Ofori-Atta told the Appointments Committee.