Airbus scandal: Mahama and his associates received lawful paychecks – OSP
The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has stated that Samuel Adam Foster, also known as Samuel Adam Mahama, and his associates mentioned in the controversial Airbus scandal, did not receive any money with the intent to bribe government officials.
The three persons, Samuel Adam Foster, the brother of former President John Mahama, Philip Sean Middlemiss, and Leanne Sarah Davis acted as business partners of Airbus in respect of the Airbus-Ghana deal to purchase military aircraft for the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).
Although a UK court had muffled their identities, the OSP revealed their names through an independent enquiry.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, August 8, 2024, Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng said the relationship between Airbus and the three business persons was neither one-off nor peculiar to the Airbus-Ghana deal.
He said an investigation which lasted from February 2020 to June 2024, revealed that the parties had been engaged in business promotion in other African countries before the Ghana transaction in which the three were to be remunerated success-based commission payments.
“And their actions (in whichever way viewed) were calculated as businessmen expecting their lawful paychecks and not as conduits of a bribery scheme. It does not amount to the payment of bribes to court favour with Ghanaian public officials in the reckoning of Ghanaian law. Neither does the short declaration by Airbus to the Spanish export credit agency and Airbus’ non-declaration in the context of US ITAR,” the OSP said.
The OSP, therefore, concluded that it found no evidentiary basis that suggests that Samuel Adam Foster, Philip Sean Middlemiss, and Leanne Sarah Davis received payments from Airbus to bribe former President John Dramani Mahama or any other public official.
Meanwhile, according to the Special Prosecutor, his office “found no evidence of corruption” against the former president despite widely suggested rumours of his direct involvement and collection of bribes to facilitate the transaction.
Background
Aircraft manufacturer, Airbus, confessed to paying bribes in Ghana and other countries between 2011 and 2015 in a corruption investigation of its business deals dating back more than a decade.
In March 2020, the Attorney General named former President John Mahama as the unnamed government official in the British court documents.
Mr Mahama was tagged as the official one who pulled the strings to enable some British nationals, including Samuel Adams Foster, to profit from the Airbus bribery scheme.
The said aircraft were purchased for the military when Mr. Mahama was the Vice President and Chairman of the Armed Forces Council and the Police Council.
However, the deals were widely criticized as non-transparent and overpriced.