Special Prosecutor (SP) Kissi Agyebeng has cleared former President John Dramani Mahama over any corruption and corruption-related offences over the controversial Airbus deal that has dominated headlines for years.
At a presser on Thursday, August 8, 2024, the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) emphatically said that the former president was clean of any crime, involving the Airbus deal.
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.
“The OSP investigation found no evidence that former president Mahama was involved or played any role in the procurement and maintenance of the agency relationship between Airbus and Foster and his associates in respect of the purchase by the Government of Ghana of military transport aircraft from Airbus.
“And it appears to the OSP that the direct communications and meetings between former president Mahama and officials of Airbus to close the deal were actuated by good intentions on the part of the former. It also appears that Foster and his associates became involved as intermediaries in the Airbus-Ghana deal after the decision by the Government of Ghana in preference of the C-295 aircraft,” he revealed.
Mr Agyebeng further disclosed that the office found no evidence suggesting the involvement of Foster (Samuel Adam Mahama, former president Mahama’s brother) as an intermediary of Airbus and the direct communications and meetings between former president Mahama and officials of Airbus amounted to any corruption or corruption-related offence.
However, the Special Prosecutor added that the former president should have considered that his familial relationship and direct communications with Foster were bound to raise reasonable suspicions of improper conduct.
“Such proximity dealings by such elected high officials of the Republic and their kin and close associates on behalf of the Republic should neither be viewed favourably nor encouraged, as they give rise to reasonable suspicion of influence peddling and conflict of interest. Never mind any intended good faith,” he added.
How the former president became a subject of interest
Aircraft manufacturer Airbus confessed to paying bribes in Ghana and other countries between 2011 and 2015 in a corruption investigation of its business deals.
At the time, court documents showed that Europe’s largest plane maker had been fined 3 billion pounds for greasing the palms of public officials and fixers over a string of hidden payments as part of a pattern of worldwide corruption to facilitate the sales of its wares.
In March 2020, the Attorney General named former President John Mahama 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 the former President’s brother, Samuel Adam Mahama, to profit from the Airbus bribery scheme.
Three other UK nationals, Philip Sean Middlemiss, Leanne Sarah Davis, and Sarah Furneaux, were fingered in the scandal.
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.
Ghana between 2011 and 2015 acquired three Airbus C295 from the company as part of an effort to augment and modernise the fleet of the Ghana Armed Forces.
The first order of the military aeroplane arrived in Ghana on November 17, 2011, followed by a second on March 19, 2012. The last order came in on December 4, 2015.
In November 2014, President John Dramani Mahama announced that Ghana would acquire an additional C295, in addition to other aircraft, including five Super Tucanos, Mi-17s and four Z-9s.
Ghana is said to have spent about $150 million on the three aircraft. One of them recently overshot its runway. The Defence Ministry explained that the accident happened because the aircraft had not gone for its scheduled maintenance.
In Ghana, Airbus is accused of hiring and disguising payments to a close relative of a government official with no aerospace experience in connection with a sale of military transport planes, the UK’s SFO investigations revealed.
UK prosecution’s case on Ghana
The UK prosecutor’s case against Airbus was that between 1 July 2011 and 1 June 2015, Airbus SE failed to prevent persons associated with the company from bribing others concerned with the purchase of military transport aircraft by the government of Ghana.
The bribery, the document said was intended to obtain or retain business or advantage in the conduct of business for Airbus.
According to the court document obtained by The Ghana Report, between 2009 and 2015, an Airbus defence company engaged an unnamed person, only identified as Intermediary 5, a close relative of a high-ranking elected Ghana government official (also not named but referred to as Government Official 1), as its business partner in respect of the proposed sale of three aircraft to the government of Ghana.
“A number of Airbus employees knew that Intermediary 5 was a close relative of Government Official 1, a key decision-maker in respect of the sales.
However, “a number of Airbus employees made or promised success-based commission payments of approximately €5 million to Intermediary 5.
“False documentation was created by or with the agreement of Airbus employees in order to support and disguise these payments. The payments were intended to induce or reward improper favour by the Government Official 1towards Airbus,” the document suggests.
“Intermediary 5 is a UK national born in Ghana. He was brought to the United Kingdom as a young child and lost touch with his Ghanaian family until the late 1990s. He had no prior experience or expertise in the aerospace industry. A ‘CV’ provided to Airbus in 2011 listed Intermediary 5’s employment before 2009 as an events manager for a local authority, director of a football merchandising company and facilities manager for an estate management business,” the document said.
The Airbus agreement with the United Kingdom, France and the United States of America is effectively a plea bargain that insulates the company from criminal prosecution that would have banned it from bidding for public contracts in the US and the European Union.
The fine is said to be the biggest corporate fine for bribery and will be shared among France, the UK and the United States, the three countries that have worked on the investigation.
Airbus, which is also a military supplier was slapped with five charges under the UK’s Bribery Act over allegations that it failed to prevent firms from being offered financial incentives to buy planes and other equipment.