Attempts by Ken Ofori-Atta of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to explain away controversies generated over the Ghc2 million debt owed Prudential Bank Limited to fund the party’s 2012 presidential campaign has further raised serious questions, threatening Ken Ofori-Atta and the NPP’s sincerity in the matter.
Serious questions are being raised about the exact principal borrower of the money and what collateral was used to guarantee the huge facility. It is yet unclear if the debt is an NPP debt or a Ken Ofori-Atta (the Chairman of investment firm Databank) debt on behalf of the NPP.
Some of the questions raised by critics, as gathered by the Republic Newspaper, include queries such as: if the debt was the liability of Ken Ofori-Atta, why was the letterhead of the NPP used to write the application for the facility, and why did Keli Gadzekpo and Ken Ofori-Atta sign the letter on an NPP letterhead when they were not officially recognized as executives of the party?
In a reaction to heated debates over the debt, Mr. Ofori-Atta, a cousin of the NPP flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, issued a statement saying he was “…personally liable for any obligation that arises from this transaction and not in any way the New Patriotic Party.
However, since this rebuttal, the immediate past General Secretary of the NPP, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie (Sir John) has contravened Ofori-Atta’s position, saying the Paul Afoko-led NPP administration should accept responsibility of the debt and settle it.
“Ideally the party must take the debt….So I think those who are at the helm of affairs today… Ideally will not even allow Ken Ofori Atta to say he will pay, they should have taken that responsibility on themselves as leaders of the party,” he told the media last Thursday; adding that the money was used to procure bicycles, motorbikes, T-shirts and cars to help the party and the presidential campaign during the 2012 elections.
Meanwhile, terms and conditions of the overdraft have also come under close scrutiny by critics, given the fact that the overdraft secured around 2012 was given at approximately 20% interest rate when the market rates for such lending were much higher.
There are also rife speculations that Ken-Ofori-Atta whose firm operates several mutual funds, could possibly have used the private funds to guarantee such a huge amount for political party activities because Keli-Gadzekpo who is the CEO of Databank- operators of the mutual funds- and who was not originally a signatory to the NPP account upon which the overdraft at Prudential bank was drawn, suddenly became a signatory.
Critics such as the Editor of the Insight Newspaper, Kwasi Pratt and others are calling for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Bank of Ghana (BOG) to investigate the the facility to ensure due diligence, “Is this a prudent investment…Bank of Ghana is supposed to be the regulator, I hope the Bank of Ghana is listening and has seen this letter…so if you deposit money at Prudential bank, this is what they do with the money?” Kwesi Pratt queried on Adom FM last Thursday.
Unraveling the truth around the debt gets even murkier given the fact that the peeved bank referred to the debt as being granted to the NPP.
The leaked letter from Prudential Bank dating April, 21, 2015, reminding party of its indebtedness and threatening legal action, stated: “We refer to our letter dated 5th January in which we requested you to arrange and pay off the overdraft facility of GHC1.5 million granted the New Patriotic Party….”
The Bank is said to have met with both the current and past administration of the NPP- Paul Afoko/Kwabena Agyapong and Jake Obetsebi Lamptey and Sir John- respectively, to try to make a case for debt to be settled, upon which both administrations claimed they had no particular knowledge of how the bank facility was secured.
The current administration of Paul Afoko and Kwabena Agyapong are reported to have argued against the NPP settling the debt because the circumstances around the contracting of the debt was not officially sanctioned by the NPP.
The Republic Newspaper can report that this issue is one main issue that has driven a wedge in the relationship between Akufo-Addo- who was a beneficiary of the campaign funds (being the party’s presidential candidate in 2012)- and the current top executives; Paul Afoko and Kwabena Agyapong.
Apparently, in 2012, Akufo-Addo had raised and blown a whopping GHC 57 million on his presidential campaign. The funds were managed by his cousin Ken Ofori-Atta and his partner Keli Gadzekpo who co-own Databank, an investment firm that has recently been rocked by controversies.
Databank is involved in the infamous Obotan scandal where it allegedly used its influence in the then NPP government to infiltrate the Social Security and National Investment Fund (SSNIT) to skim off a whopping US$2.24 from the pensioner’s fund.
A forensic audit initiated by the then administration of John Agyekum Kufuor described it as a scandalous investment.
The forensic report recommended the criminal prosecution of the NPP flagbearer’s cousin, Ken Ofori-Atta, and five others but that recommendation has since been ignored, allowing the workers’ US$ 2. 244 million pension money to disappear into thin air.
Although Databank, in 2002 when the Obotan deal became an open secret allegedly declined comments on the matter, Ken Ofori Atta would almost a decade after deny any complicity on the part of the investment bank and its associate insurance company, ‘Enterprise Insurance Groups’.
A few years after this scandal, Databank became the money bag for Nana Addo’s 2008 election campaign, according to Arthur Kennedy’s book, “Chasing The Elephant Into the Bush: The Politics of Complacency”. Ken Ofori-Atta became the campaign fund manager of the Akufo-Addo campaign.
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