Mahama, please come again on the Airbus scam

On Saturday, June 20, 2020, the Daily Graphic published a front page piece under this headline: “Mahama Denies Wrong Doing In Airbus Scandal.” The opening sentence reads: “Former President John Dramani Mahama has broken his silence on the Airbus scandal by dismissing allegations of wrong-doing in the purchase of the two aircraft for the Ghana Armed Forces.”

It has taken the former President five months to know that he has never been implicated in a scandal that has been headline news in the international community.  In two countries, at least – the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – the scandal was a subject of court proceedings that have shamed this country and its leadership.

In this article, it is my intention to dismiss former President John Dramani Mahama’s denial with the contempt it deserves, and to invite him to come again and forget about participating in the 2020 presidential election.  The former President and National Democratic Congress flagbearer cannot put this nation to shame in the international community and come back and ask the good people to make him the Number One Gentleman of the land.

I am particularly worried that by the behaviour of the former President, the administration of deceased President John Evans Atta Mills has been drawn into the murky world of bribery and corruption.

I knew the deceased head of state for a considerable time before his death. What I cannot tell is how he came to embrace the doctrine of the National Democratic Congress. But he was a decent fellow whose name should not be dragged in the mud to the international community, because of the misdeeds of the person he hand-picked to become his Vice-President.

I am doing this in defence of the good old professor of law, and to invite former President John Dramani Mahama to properly address a scandal that has shamed all Ghanaians. What the former President told the Daily Graphic cannot, in all fairness, amounts to a denial of what is looking very obvious. I am afraid, but I am inclined to believe that Mr. Mahama only threw dust into the eyes of some gullible nationals. Obviously, the so-called denial was informed by my article two days earlier, when I called for the exclusion of Mr. John Mahama on the ballot paper for the December presidential election.  It is unfortunate, but the former President needs to improve on the perception throughout the country that he is one leader who has corrupted the system the most.

In his denial interview with Mr. Albert Salia, Acting Political Editor of state-run Daily Graphic, Mr. Mahama rumbled on about how the aircraft purchased by his administration had aided the Ghana Armed Forces in its operations. Read the lips of the former President: “I am proud that under my tenure as Chairman of the Armed Forces Council and as Commander in Chief, the security services saw the biggest re-tooling and equipping in the history of Ghana.”

The Armed Forces are grateful for the re-tooling, that really is the case.

Unfortunately, the issue on the table has absolutely nothing to do with which government did what. What has ruffled feathers at the centre of the earth is simple. That this country’s image is in tatters following a bribery scam so foul.

Just before Covid-19 locked some parts of this country down in March, news came through from the United States of America and the United Kingdom that officials of the Government of the Republic of Ghana, who negotiated for the purchase of aircraft for use by the military, took bribes amounting to five million Euros.

In Washington, details of documents revealed “gory details of how the National Democratic Congress government of Prof. J.E.A. Mills and Mr. John Dramani Mahama took bribes and allowed European Aircraft manufacturer Airbus SE to supply unapproved aircraft to the Ghana Armed Forces.

According to evidence presented in a US court, which was enforcing a judgment against top executives of Airbus Se, aircraft sold to Ghana were without International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), and that there was evidence of bribes paid to a top elected official.

The ITAR was explained as a US Regulatory regime that restricts and controls the export of defence and military-related technologies to safeguard US nationals and further US foreign policy objective. Around the same time, the explosive bribery scandal hit the Southwark Crown Court in London.

In London, the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom presented documents to the court, leading to the fine of three billion Pounds Sterling against Airbus SE. Airbus admitted that it had been paying huge bribes on an ‘endemic’ basis to land contracts in 20 countries, including Ghana, and that the US court was following suit to ensure that those involved were punished.

According to court documents in London, the Serious Fraud Office quoted, at least, five million as payment of kick-backs to a top Ghanaian official (Government Official 1) through an intermediary (Intermediary 5), who is a close relative of a ‘high ranking elected Ghanaian government official’ during the Mahama administration.

The UK Serious Fraud Office was unambiguous in its presentation in court that Intermediary 5 was sent to the United Kingdom as a child. Readers should note that in his autobiography – My First Coup d’état – Mr. John Dramani Mahama stated that his father, Mr. E. A. Mahama, listed as the first Regional Minister in the Northern Region during the Nkrumah regime, had a son outside his matrimonial home.

According to Mr. Mahama’s own account, his father’s son was given out to a childless British Missionary couple, who sent him to London with the promise of giving the boy British education. The family back home lost contact with the family and the child in London, until he was found again in the 1990s.

Those who know the Mahama family say that the child was actually the son of a Nigerian couple who were affected by the Aliens Compliance Order of 1970. In their endeavour to let their child stay in Ghana, the Igbo couple asked Mahama Senior to adopt the child. When the British couple, who were fond of the child. approached the former minister to allow them to take the child on their way back to the UK, he obliged.

Unfortunately, when the child arrived in the UK, he lost contact with his adopted family in Ghana until John entered politics in the 1990s and found him, obviously on his many trips abroad as a government official.

It is important to remember that shortly before the bribery scandal broke in Washington and London, one of the Airbus aircraft that was sold to Ghana by Airbus SE – CASA C-295 – without the requisite diligence, overran the runway at the Kotoka International Airport. It is very significant to recall in the narration of events leading to the bribery scam.

The US version of the same case was titled the United States of America versus the Airbus SE as defendants (Case No.1:20 cr 00021(TFH). US prosecutors took time to explain how Airbus gurus conspired with an elected top government official in the supply of aircraft to Ghana, “in clear contravention of air travel regulations.”

Read this serious indictment from the US court. “Airbus completed two campaigns to sell C-29 aircraft to the Republic of Ghana in 2009 and 2015, resulting in the sale of three C-295s during the period, two of which were the subject of false ITAR part 130 certificates. The documentation laid in court said, in one particular transaction, “there was no application filed for, because the re-export did not meet the requirement of the ITAR Part 130.”

The document laid in court said several Airbus senior executives from “Airbus Defence and Space were involved in the Ghana sales campaign.”

The court said: “In fact, Airbus or its vendors has paid, offered, or agreed to pay political contributions, fees or commissions in connection with these sales in the amount of at least 3,596,523 Euros.”

These facts have never been contradicted since they were laid bare in court in February. It is as clear as daylight that bribes were paid to Ghanaian officials at the time Mr. John Dramani Mahama sat at the Castle, and later Flagstaff House as Vice President, and later President of the Republic of Ghana.

Secondly, the description of Intermediary 5 as the conduit pipe for the sordid bribery scandal fits the description the former President he himself gave in his autobiography of his lost and found brother in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Mahama owes it a duty to himself and the good people of Ghana to come clean on this matter. I assure him that I would continue to hammer home until the truth is established.

Tomorrow, God willing, I shall return to this same topic. There is a lot that the former President has not told the good people of Ghana.

I shall return!

Ebo Quansah in Accra

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s editorial stance

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