Airbus scandal: Mahama set up a bogus company in Ghana to receive bribes – NPP

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The presidential candidate of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, established a phony company in Ghana to receive bribe payments from Airbus, the governing NPP has revealed.

The disclosure comes on the back of news that the government of Ghana had commenced efforts to get Ghana’s share of the airbus compensation repatriated to Ghana.

International courts fined Airbus, the International airplane manufacturer about $3.9 billion in compensation for admitting it paid bribes to various international actors as part of its operations. 

You would recall that former President Mahama and his family were embroiled in, what was described by the US Department of Justice as the “largest global foreign bribery” case to date. 

The expanse of the crime was unearthed in a three-country investigation, with court documents —released by the United States District Court for Columbia (Case No.: 1:20-cr-00021 (TFH), France’s Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris (Réf: PNF 16 159 000 839) and the United Kingdom’s Crown Court at Southwark – Royal Courts of Justice (Case No: U20200108).

The airbus affair which was jointly investigated by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, the French Parquet National Financier, and the United States Department of Justice concluded that Airbus “between 2009 and 2015 engaged intermediary 5” – identified as Samuel Adam Mahama, John Mahama’s brother, for the sale of two aircraft to the government of Ghana.  

An amount of €3.8m was paid to the Mahamas before the exposure of the criminal activity. 

“Despite the case having been exposed, however, the Mahama brothers continued to demand that the rest of the bribe be rightfully paid them, according to court documents. This is greed with impunity,” the deputy campaign manager of the NPP, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid said during a news conference in Accra on Friday, December 4, 2020.

He said Ghana’s case had been singled out due to the impunity linked to Mahama’s determination to continue cashing in on bribes in the face of international exposure, “when he directed his brother to set up a bogus company in Ghana to receive bribe payments.” 

 Citing court documents, Abdul-Hamid explained, “the two Mahama brothers confected fake documents to collect bribe money from Airbus after the company’s compliance officials said they could not pay Samuel Mahama’s company because he was the brother of a sitting president.”

 He said the fake documents were channeled through a Spanish company to cash the bribe money, which was then transferred to the Mahamas. 

Abdul-Hamid further noted that in a separate corrupt deal with the company, Mahama as substantive president had been working on another contract involving three more aircraft with Airbus when the tide turned against him. “This could have fetched him an additional 10 million Euros or even more,” he said.

Sold integrity for 5m euros 

Abdul-Hamid continued that Mahama cannot be entrusted with Ghana’s fight against corruption after selling his integrity for 5million euros in the Airbus Scandal.

Former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu, fingered the presidential candidate of the NDC, as the mysterious ‘government official one’ in the scandal.

Mustapha Abdul-Hamid said Mahama had not been able to travel to Europe or the United States since the issue broke at the end of February 2020. 

“Indeed, our information is that his own brother Ibrahim Mahama was even made a victim of the Airbus scandal, when he traveled to the United States in January 2019, where he was denied entry and returned to London because of the investigation that was going on involving his two other brothers, John and Samuel,” he said.

Since March 2020, Ghanaians have been wondering when Mahama will be interrogated over the 5 million Euros bribery allegation. 

The former special prosecutor explained that he couldn’t prosecute Mahama because he secured himself an escape “as the presidential candidate of the NDC.”

Source: Daily Mail GH