The Office of the Special Prosecutor has posited that Government Official 1 as referred to in the ongoing investigations over a £5 million Airbus bribery is a former President.
A statement from the OSP said efforts at retrieving a recording of a denial interview the said Government Official 1 granted the Daily Graphic recently have been unsuccessful.
The office stated some admissions were made in that interview that he is the elected Government Official 1.
“Serving appointees of this government have been unable to obtain the voice recording of the interview to enable this office to confront the former President with his own admissions in the interview as answering to the description of the brother of Samuel Mahama as the intermediary 5,” the statement said.
It would be recalled that former President John Dramani Mahama in an interview with the Daily Graphic in June said “Let me state without any equivocation that no financial benefit accrued to me. Neither was there any form of inducement in the purchase of the aircraft. My singular motivation was to equip and retool the Ghana Armed Forces in a manner that would make the discharge of their national and international roles efficient and less burdensome and for all the sacrifices that our men and women in uniform make, they do not deserve less”.
Meanwhile Mr. Martin Amidu has written to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ask the High Commission in the UK to urgently facilitate the voluntary evacuation of an intermediary identified as Samuel Adam Mahama, to Ghana to “assuage not only his own image but also that of his brother the former President,” it added.
Airbus SE, in February 2020, was fined three billion pounds in penalties by the UK Crown Court of Southwark, London, after admitting it had paid huge bribes to enable it land contracts in 20 countries, including Ghana.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor has since been investigating the matter following a directive by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
