The General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Kwabena Agyei Agyapong, has broken his silence on allegations of diversion of party funds and accused the flagbearer of sidelining the party Chairman and General Secretary in his dealings.
According to Mr Agyapong, despite the moves to sideline them, there was an orchestrated effort to deliberately project the General Secretary as someone who was bent on sabotaging the campaign of the flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
In an interview on OkayFM Monday morning, Mr Agyapong said he had tried to restrain himself from going public with the matters since he reckoned it bothered on internal party issues.
But since the First Vice Chair, Mr Freddy Blay, and the Treasurer, Mr Abankwa Yeboah, chose to go to the “court of public opinion” with the issues and painted him [Agyapong] and the chairman [Afoko] as “bad people” who have decided to exclude the treasurer as a signatory to the bank accounts of the party, an allegation Mr Agyapong said was not true, he had no choice but to also respond to them publicly.
Again since other party members, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, Joe Osei Owusu, Dominic Nitiwul, Ursula Owusu Akuful, Gabby Asare Otchere Darko and Victor Newman all chose to go public, he felt the matter could no longer be handled as an internal party issue since it was already in the court of public opinion.
“I am breaking my silence on the matter so that the public would hear the other side. It is with a very deep heart that I have to answer this way.”
The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service is investigating the First Vice-Chair of the NPP, Mr Freddie Blay, and the Treasurer, Mr Abankwah Yeboah, over the alleged diversion of party funds. According to the police, the two had expended party funds without resorting to laid down procedure.
Responding to the issues on Okay FM, Mr Agyapong said there was everything wrong with the decision of the Treasurer and the First Vice Chair to re-activate an account of the party at Ecobank without the knowledge of the party Chairman and General Secretary.
He said it was the Treasurer who first confessed on August 10, 2015 at a special meeting of the Finance Committee that the said account had been reactivated.
The matter was referred to the National Executive Committee on August 18 and the Volta Regional Chairman, Mr Peter Amewu, even commented that it bothered on criminality and that if it were to be any corporate organization, the treasurer would have been sacked. A sub-committee was then formed to go into the matter.
According to Mr Agyapong, he traveled to United States and in his absence, he got information on August 27 that someone had complained to the police and the police had written to him for a response.
The next thing he heard was Freddie Blay and Abankwa Yeboah choosing to go to the court of public opinion.
Mr Agyapong denied squandering party funds as alleged by Mr Blay and Mr Yeboah and said the Treasurer had all the party cheque books in his possession.
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