The Government Official 1 in the Airbus Scandal has been named as former president John Dramani Mahama by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP).
At a news conference on Thursday, August 8, in Accra, Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng also verified that Samuel Mahama, the brother of the former president, was intermediary 5.
The OSP provided a brief synopsis of the investigations conducted by his team and verified that John Dramani Mahama was not involved in the acquisition despite being named as Government Official 1 and Individual 1 by US and UK courts, respectively.
“The OSP confirms the identity of the following individuals. The individual described as Government Official 1 by the UK court and Individual 1 by the US court is John Dramani Mahama. He is a citizen of Ghana and was the Vice-President of Ghana from January 7 2009 to July 24, 2012,” the OSP stated.
“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. Therefore, it seems that Foster’s Airbus intermediary role at the time his brother served as the Vice President of Ghana was a case of luckless coincidence that attracted the disapproval of the UK and US authorities.
“The OSP found no evidence that suggests that the involvement of Foster as an intermediary of Airbus and the direct communications and meetings between former President Mahama and officials of Airbus to close the deal between Airbus and the Government of Ghana amounted to any corruption and corruption-related offence in respect of which the OSP has a mandate.”
In 2020, investigations into an arrangement made under Mahama’s administration to purchase two military transport aircraft from Airbus for the Ghana Armed Forces were started by former Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu.
It was claimed that the incident involved the former president John Dramani Mahama and his brother, Samuel Adam Mahama Foster.
An INTERPOL Red Notice was issued after a UK court heard charges against Samuel Adam Mahama Foster and his friends in the UK in connection with the Airbus SE-Ghana case and issued an arrest demand for them.
Background of the Airbus Scandal
Ghana purchased three C295 military aircraft from Airbus. In November 2011, the country got its first C295 shipment. In November 2015, the third aircraft was delivered, while the second one arrived in April 2012.
At the time, it was claimed that the agreements covering them were acceptable with the Ghana Armed Forces’ 2009–2012 Strategic Plan.
The administration of the day vigorously promoted all three purchases as an effort to modernise Ghana’s Air Force, and they were eventually authorised by the country’s parliament following contentious debates on the floor.
Funding for the first two C295s came from a €60,034,636 loan facility from the Deutsche Bank S.A.E.
A further €11,750,000 million loan from the Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited was also approved by Parliament during the period for the acquisition of two DA42 MPP Guardian surveillance aircraft for the Ghana Airforce.
The House also approved a total loan sum of $105,370,177.09 from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) for the purchase of an Embraer E190 jet for the country. The Embraer agreement was to cover related spare parts, relevant accessories as well as the construction of an aircraft hangar big enough to house three large aircraft.
Then-minority leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu had denounced the loan arrangements as dubious and opaque before the Parliament approved them, claiming that the administration had inflated the contract amounts.
Known for using statistics obtained from the internet to support his allegations, he faced contempt for only depending on Google to generate such grave accusations of misconduct.
In Mali, missions commanded by the UN were aided by one of the C295s obtained as part of the agreement. As stated at the time by the government, the remaining ones were purchased to assist the strategic activities of the Ghana Air Force, which included border patrol, pilot training, monitoring the nation’s offshore oil production sectors, and internal troop transportation.
In November 2014, then President John Mahama had announced that Ghana planned to acquire more Military equipment, including five Super Tucanos, Mi-17s and four Z-9s, for the Ghana Airforce.
At the time, Ghanaian troops were said to have relied heavily on civilian flights for their movements and needed military aircraft to correct this anomaly. Despite opposition criticisms, the government went ahead with the purchase agreements.
UK Court’s judgement
The recent judgement by England’s Crown Court in Southwark would appear to have now given a new life to earlier suspicions that the agreements covering the C295s especially were corrupt. The January 21, 2020 decision approved a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) between the Serious Fraud Office and Airbus SE, a subsidiary of Airbus, after investigations exposed massive bribery scandals involving the aircraft manufacturer in breach of the Bribery Act 2010.
English law allows the SFO to postpone prosecution of an organisation based on an agreement between the SFO and a company or companies suspected to have committed economic crimes.
Such an agreement – (DPA) – requires a seal of Judicial approval to become lawful and may even allow the offending institution to avoid prosecution entirely.
The court, in its decision on such applications, considers among other things, whether or not the DPA before it is in the public interest.
Also, the terms of the agreement must be fair, reasonable and proportionate.
In the present case, the court found that the DPA is in the public interest and that the terms agreed to meet the tests of fairness, reasonability and proportionality.
The court took the view that prosecuting Airbus now would among other things, lead to massive job losses and decimate the company’s performance on the stock market in the immediate to long term.
According to independent calculations, Airbus may easily suffer long-term losses of about £200 billion if it were prosecuted right away.
According to the ruling, SFO investigations revealed that Airbus had participated in schemes involving bribing its way to profitable contracts in nations like Ghana, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Indonesia. Airbus has now agreed to pay over £3 billion in fines.
Similar evidence of purported bribery involving Airbus personnel and/or their agents abroad, especially in China and Russia, has also been discovered by French and US investigators.
According to the Crown Court’s ruling in Ghana, between 2011 and 2015, Airbus employees either bribed or consented to bribe intermediaries who were close to a high-ranking state official who was allegedly in charge of the nation’s aircraft purchase plans as part of a scheme to secure and/or retain contracts with the government.
Although the judgment’s chronology encompassed certain Mills-Mahama era times, no identities were mentioned in the court filings.
The initial bribery arrangement in Ghana concerned approximately €5 million, which was purportedly paid as a commission to “intermediary 5,” an intermediary that Airbus had hired to advance its plan to sell two C295 aircraft to Ghana.
Due process investigations eventually revealed the questionable agreements, and no money was transferred.
Following successful efforts by Airbus, Ghana purchased three C259 aircraft at different dates from the multinational’s Spanish defence companies.
The arrangements were made through a number of middlemen, headed by “intermediary 5,” who was allegedly an unidentified relative of a significant Ghanaian official who at the time held decision-making authority over the suggested aircraft purchase agreements.
However, a plan was hatched by the parties to route the transaction through a third party company of Spanish origin, which company had no prior dealings with Ghana, after an internal investigation revealed the connection between intermediary 5 and the unnamed high-ranking government official of Ghana.
The Spanish business was only put into the plans to get around due diligence requirements and give the dubious deal a clean sheet, but it was passed off as the facilitator of the planned aircraft purchase agreements. Following the completion of the agreement with Ghana, which saw the sale of two aircraft, Airbus or its representatives used fraudulent claims and documentation to pay bribes to the Spanish third-party firm, which then transferred the funds to intermediary 5.
The money was paid under false pretences as commission on the agreed-upon sum. The Spanish third-party corporation withdrew from a later agreement that would have given Ghana her third C259 aircraft. This occurred subsequent to Airbus hiring an outside attorney to carry out due diligence on the matter. Following up, Intermediary 5 claimed that Airbus owed him roughly €1.6 million under the terms of the third C295 contract, but this claim was not honoured.
