‘If you want Airbus saga investigated, why not include missing excavators?’ – Asiedu Nketia dares Akufo-Addo

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has accused the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) of capitalising on the recent Airbus SE scandal to turn the attention of the public from critical issues affecting the country.

Mr Nketiah has accused the government of a smear campaign against officials of the NDC government who have been accused in the scandal.

Even though the four-year investigations by UK, French and US officials were short of mentioning names, the alleged corruption was stated to have taken place between 2011 and 2015.

Social media commentary and critics have dropped clues which point to former President John Dramani Mahama as being the centre of the corruption scandal.

However, Mr Nketiah told Accra-based Joy TV that: “Whenever NPP has its back on the wall they just want to divert the attention of the nation”.

Aircraft manufacturer, Airbus, has confirmed the exchange of monies in Ghana and other countries in a corruption investigation of its business deals dating back more than a decade.

The bribes concern the sale of its Airbus C-295 military aircraft to Ghana. Airbus reached a settlement of 3 billion euros with authorities to avoid criminal proceedings against Europe’s aerospace giants for the bribes.

UK Court document alleged a Ghanaian elected government official and his relative worked in the acquisition of three Airbus C-295 military aircraft. The relative of this official received 3.9 million euros from the transaction.

Explosive document: Airbus confesses sharing bribes in Ghana as £3bn corruption fine bites

For Mr Nketia, the wave of discussions on the development is orchestrated by the NPP government to shift the focus of Ghanaians from the Electoral Commissions’ decision to commit huge resourced more than GHC444 for the acquisition of a new voter roll as well as other “burning issues”.

For him, the uproar about the Airbus scandal is “much ado about nothing” and indicated that the Crown Court of Southwark failed to invite any Ghanaian official to testify in relation to the case.

Mr Nketiah noted that officials of the past government are willing to submit to any investigations as ordered by President Nana Akufo-Addo so far as other corruption scandals under the current government will be probed.

Media Foundation’s Sulemana Braimah strips bare Government Official 1

“We are open to any investigation including the investigation of vanishing excavators and the vanishing of container loads of tricycles,” he said.

He rejected the corruption tag slapped on the erstwhile NDC government, stating that the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) which captures transactions between multinationals and governments of various countries was very high within the periods the NDC government has been accused in engaging in the shady aircraft deals.