Former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu, raised red flags about President Akufo Addo’s involvement in the US$ 64 Million Sputnik V Russian vaccine scandal.
According to him, in a statement released today, the approval of payments requests by the Finance Ministry goes to reinforce the suspicion that Ken Ofori-Atta is a key architect in what he sees as an “interfering endorsement by President Akufo-Addo of the Sputnik affairs.”
Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu has been under pressure to resign or be sacked by President Akufo-Addo for bypassing Parliamentary and Cabinet approvals to sculpt a deal with an amorphous company of Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum for the procurement of the Sputnik V vaccine.
Kwaku Agyemang Manu’s deal entailed Ghana agreeing to pay USD19 per vaccine even though the Russians were selling their product at USD10 per vaccine.
The Health Minister has claimed he was forced to go into that deal because there was an urgent need to have Ghanaians vaccinated against the covid-19 disease and that he was not “thinking properly” when he signed the contract.
However, the deal would eventually fall through. Agyemang Manu would later lie to Parliament Ghana had not paid a dime to the middlemen, only for it to emerge that indeed Ghana had made a down payment of $2,470,000 50% of the total amount involved.
The Dubai Royal has been forced to return the money.
However, Mr. Amidu who has resigned unceremoniously following his revelation that President Akufo Addo was involved and was the “Mother Serpent” of corruption in the dubious Agyapa Royalties deal, pointed out a smoking gun of why he thinks President Akufo Addo is again personally involved in the raging Sputnik V scandal.
Mr. Amidu said the smoking gun is the behaviour of President Akufo Addo during his speech at a durbar of chiefs in the Bono Region on August 10. Amidst intense calls for the sacking and criminal prosecution of Mr. Agyemang Manu, when he had the opportunity to comment on the fiasco, President Akufo Addo rather eulogised the under-fire Agyeman-Manu, saying he has endured a lot of suffering to stabilise the health sector.
But Martin Amidu says Ghanaians must “never be fooled that this was intended as a joke.”
In his statement, Amidu wrote: “In such a constitutional dispensation, any pronouncement by the President of the Republic adulating any of his appointees who are under investigation for the possible commission of a suspected crime, particularly corruption-related crimes, constitute a signal in the nature of a directive first to the President’s appointees and Members of Parliament from the governing party,” he wrote.
Amidu says he sees a repeat of the Agyapa scandal, where he accused President Akufo Addo of directly attempting to arm-twist him to self a corruption assessment report on Agyapa, which revealed that the President’s nephew and Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta had fraudulently planted himself as a key beneficiary of the deal that would have vested Ghana’s entire mineral royalties in his legion of companies contracted by his private company, Databank Financial Services to act as transaction advisors for the deal.