M&J Bribery Scandal: The Official Document
Extracts from the official document
VIII: THE GHANA CONTRACTS
107. M&J has conducted business with government departments
in Ghana over a number of decades. From the mid 1980’s until
approximately 1996, M&J’s interests in Ghana were
represented by Kwame Ofori. During the early 1990's Kwame
Ofori acted as M&J's agent in Ghana. He controlled a
Ghanaian bridge building company, and apparently had
influence within the ruling circles of the then ruling party
in the Ghanaian government - the National Democratic
Congress (“NDC”).
108. To promote its business transactions with government
departments of Ghana, M&J paid commissions to its agent or
agents in relation to the business it won in Ghana. It is
accepted by M&J that through the creation of the GDF (the
notional fund created by M&J known as the “Ghana Development
Fund”), its executives facilitated corruption on behalf of
M&J and that its executives were in (or sought to create) a
corrupt relationship with a variety of decision making
Ghanaian public officials with responsibilities affecting
M&J’s affairs. These funds were purportedly for the
development of M&J business in Ghana but, in truth and
reality, were capable of and were understood to be capable
of, being used for corrupt purposes.
109. When appointing and permitting its agents in Ghana to
act on its behalf or for it, M&J knew that there was a risk
that unknown proportions of the agents' commission totalling
£750,000 might be used for corrupt purposes.
110. The budget representing the GDF was managed by Director
D, an executive who later became a director of M&J. Whilst
Director D had responsibility for different territories
during his career, in particular he had responsibility for
Ghana. Consequently during the material period, the affairs
of M&J in Ghana were heavily influenced by his direction and
control.
111. On 3 April 1996 Mr. Ofori and a relative attended a
meeting at Twyford with the Office Manager. It appears that
Director B and other Directors made their excuses for not
attending. The Office Manager' note of the meeting records
that Mr Ofori did not have control over the "total 15%
commission". Mr Ofori complained that he had problems as he
did not believe Director D had distributed 5% to the
"relevant personnel" or “local personalities”. The note
records Mr Ofori saying that had he been involved in the
payment of the total amount of the 15% commission the
present difficulties would not have existed and said that
this aspect had been dealt with ably by him in the past.
112. On 14 March 1996 Mr. Ofori had sent a fax on “Danielli
Mabey Ltd” headed notepaper (a Ghanaian company which was
wholly unrelated to M&J and which is understood to have been
owned by Kwame Ofori). The fax was marked for the attention
of Mrs Margaret Ofori in Accra and appears to have been then
passed to M&J. The fax detailed how it was that “the
situation in Ghana has been deteriorating gradually ever
since Director D came in to Ghana.” There can be little
doubt that the contents of the fax had become known at
Twyford before Mr. Ofori visited M&J’s Head Office. This is
because Director D had himself sent a “confidential memo”
dated 25 March 1996 direct to Director B rebutting Mr.
Ofori’s assertions, and detailing how it was that he had had
a meeting recently with the only person who “can guarantee
M&J’s position in this market”: Kwame Peprah. Mr. Peprah was
at that time the acting Minister of Finance and the Chairman
of the NDC Finance Committee.
113. In fact Director D had been introduced to Mr. Peprah
through Baba Kamara (aka I. B. Ibraimah), who was the NDC
Treasurer, and ‘political overseer’ for the Ministry for
Roads and Highways.
114. The role of Baba Kamara and his value as an agent to
M&J is made clear in a document authored by a M&J executive,
probably prior to July 1996, and sent to Director A;
Director B; Director C and Director E. The document is
entitled “Ghana” “Review of existing Agent and introduction
of alternative Agent”. Concerning the value of the proposed
new agent, “Kamara Ltd is a small Ghanaian contractor owned
by Baba Kamara. He is the NCE (sic) Treasurer and also the
political overseer for the Ministry of Roads and Highways.
He is a member of the all powerful NDC Finance Committee
which includes Kwame Peprah (Minister of Finance and
Minister of Mines and Energy), Obed Asamoah (Justice
Minister and Foreign Minister) and Mrs Rawlings amongst
others….[he] has considerable influence over Ato Quarshie,
the Minister for Roads, the Deputy Minister and other top
ranking civil servants and has been working with us since
June 1994. This has been demonstrated over the allocation of
the extra Stg 1.3 mil for the Tano bridge and the Stg 4.5
mil allocation for the Priority Bridge Programme.”5
115. Additionally, Mr. Kamara’s wife was secretary to the
then President of Ghana - the former Flight Lieutenant
‘Jerry’ Rawlings, who had originally achieved power by means
of a military coup in 1981. Unsurprisingly, a person in the
position of influence of Mr. Kamara was an attractive
prospect to M&J as agent for their business in Ghana, and
the SFO contend, that M&J knew and intended that commission
paid to Mr. Kamara would be deployed as and when required to
corruptly promote M&J’s commercial interests. The SFO
believe that because he had demonstrated his effectiveness
to attract business corruptly, he was appointed by M&J. This
is not accepted by M&J.
116. Allied to the decision to use Mr. Kamara as their agent
from some time early in 1996, M&J had plainly also decided
to “sideline” Mr. Ofori, and to impose more direct control
over the payments made to “local personalities” by Director
D supervising and control from 1994 and the creation of the
notional GDF.
117. As will become apparent, whereas in Jamaica corrupt
payments were directed towards a specific individual,
payments allocated against the GDF were more general and
numerous government ministers and officials were potentially
in line for a bribe. Each such payment required the
authorisation of two M&J directors.
118. Payments allocated against the GDF did not relate
specifically to stages of contracts in progress. The SFO
says that they were obviously made with the intention of
securing and maintaining those contracts when it was deemed
prudent to do so. It is accepted by M&J that in creating and
making payments from this fund corrupt payments would be
made to public officials in order to affect the decision
making process in favour of M&J. Thus payments were made for
a variety of purported purposes to a variety of ministers
and officials. Some of those purposes were self-evidently
unrelated to M&J’s legitimate business such that the
payments can best - and, indeed, only - be described as
bribes. Not only were the bribes overt, so too was the means
of collection on the part of the Ghanaian ministers and
officials, most of whom had UK bank accounts. Some, indeed,
visited the UK in order to collect their payments in
sterling.
119. During the 1990’s M&J entered into three principal
contracts with the Ghanaian Ministry of Roads and Highways
(“MRH”) for the provision of bridges: Priority Bridge
Programme Number 1, worth £14.5 million, was agreed in 1994;
Priority Bridge Programme Number 2, worth around £8 million,
was agreed in 1996; and the Feeder Roads Project, worth £3.5
million, was agreed in 1998.
120. Throughout the relevant period, and until the general
election in 2000, the NDC formed the Government of Ghana and
many of the GDF payments were directed to its members. Thus
the then Minister at the MRH, Dr. Ato Quarshie, received a
cheque when he visited London in July 1995 in the sum of
£55,000 for “contract consultancy”. The cheque was drawn on
M&J’s Clydesdale Bank account at the Victoria branch in
Buckingham Palace Road, and signed by Director A, and
another M&J director at that time. Director A also faxed the
bank instructions to enable Dr. Quarshie to cash the cheque.
121. The payment to Dr. Quarshie and the following payments
are but examples of a wider-ranging series of bribes to
various ministers and officials, which will be set out in a
schedule. Even relatively junior officials were the willing
recipients of bribes. In 1996 Saddique Bonniface was the
ECGD desk officer in the Ministry of Finance (he was
recently until the change of government a highly placed
politician within the Ghanaian administration). He had a
bank account at the National Westminster Bank in
Rickmansworth. On 29 February 1996 Saddique Boniface
received a transfer of £10,000 from M&J to an account at
Barclays Bank Plc in Watford. On 29 October 1996 the same
account received a transfer of £13,970 from M&J. On or about
29 October 1996 Amadu Seidu, the Deputy Minister at the MRH,
received £5000 in his Woolwich account held in St. Peter
Port, Guernsey and Dr. George Yankey the Director of Legal
and International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance,
received £10,000 in his Midland Bank account in Hill Street,
London W1; and Edward Lord Attivor, the ex minister at the
MRH, also received £10,000 in his London bank account. This
was the same branch of the Clydesdale Bank which was used by
M&J. Authorisation from M&J directors for each of these
transfers was requested by Director D. Amadu Seidu received
a further £5,000 on 7 March 1997, the same date on which
Saddique Bonniface received a further £2,500. The latter two
transfers were authorised by Director B.
122. Mr. Bonniface’s son was a student at Exeter University,
where, on or about 26 March 1998, he received a cheque from
M&J in the sum of £500. Although this is a relatively small
sum it is indicative of the nature of the corruption M&J was
then practising: it is a payment which could have no
conceivable legitimate commercial purpose.
123. M&J's payments to Dr. Yankey were not confined to the
payment on or about 24 October 1996, since his Hill Street
account received £5,000 on 26 August 1998 from M&J. Dr.
Yankey was subsequently convicted in Ghana of conspiring to
wilfully cause losses to the state and served a prison
sentence, along with Kwame Peprah. Their convictions cannot
be directly related to payments from M&J, but reflect the
culture of government corruption at the time, a culture with
which M&J was only too willing to engage.
124. From December 1994 to 18 August 1999, M&J used the GDF
and associated accounts to pay bribes directly to named
Ghanaian public officials totalling £470,792.60.
125. None of the payments set out above, obviously, could be
said to have anything remotely resembling a legitimate
commercial purpose. Thus M&J was able to engage in wholly
corrupt business practices without any effective level of
external scrutiny being applied. Plainly, those who governed
and directed the affairs of M&J were responsible for
arranging and authorising payments which, no matter they
were eagerly sought and accepted, were considered vital in
securing M&J’s business in a developing nation – at the
expense of those least able to avoid the expenditure that is
inevitably involved in the making of corrupt payments: the
people of Ghana.
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