Ao, My Mother!

As He Faces BNI Today

Is Peprah’s Mother Getting Company?

After all his double game of loud noises in public to show that he is not afraid of prosecution on one hand and at the same time, his behind the scenes manoeuvrings for clemency from President Atta Mills on the other, the former Chief of Staff and Minister of Presidential Affairs, Mr Kwadwo Okyere Mpiani is to be probed for corruption by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) today. But he says he is worried for his aged mum who cannot stand the news.

Mr Mpiani, obviously the most powerful minister in the past Kufuor-led NPP government, has severally dared President Atta Mills and his government to prosecute him if they can. But behind the public show of bravado, this paper is aware that the former Castle Lord has been frantically engaged in behind the scenes manoeuvrings in trying very hard to get people in high places in the new government to workout a possible escape route for him to avoid the very prosecution he claims publicly to be ready for.

From all indications, the government has settled for the former option, that is, to probe the once powerful Kwadwo Mpiani for a possible prosecution on corruption charges. He lamented on Peace FM on Wednesday that his main worry in all this is that his very old mother is getting increasingly troubled at the news of his being hauled to the BNI for probe and that his son might possibly end up in jail.

Claims by the former chief of staff that the BNI had not being to his home in Accra looking for him have been debunked as false. According to our sources, it took a whole week of search by the BNI to finally get through to him via his mobile phone after several prior attempts including a visit to his home in Accra had failed.

The Catalyst BNI sources insist that they visited the former Chief of Staff’s home to hand him his invitation notice to face a probe on some questionable financial dealings he is suspected to be involved in whilst in office but met his absence.

Some of the corruption issues the paper has been hinted about include Ghana@50, the Presidential Palace Complex project, lack of inventory on all cars imported with the taxpayers money under his watch, the sale of state lands and bungalows to NPP ministers and cronies at ridiculously low prices and other damning allegations.

This decision was finally reached after a week-long game of hide and seek by Mr Mpiani who has been at large momentarily but claims he only travelled to his hometown to perform an array of funerals and that someone else handles his mobile phone calls.

Our sources indicated that the BNI initially had a date with Mr Mpiani on Thursday 28th May 2009 at 1: OO pm despite claims by him that he was not aware. According to our sources, the BNI only gave beleaguered Mpiani a little breathing space when he pleaded profusely for more time until today Monday June 1, 2009 to appear, which has been described as an obvious ploy to buy time. He claimed he needed more time to finish with his multiple funeral rites.

Asked what will happen if he fails to honour the invitation, our source had this to say. “I don’t think he will fail to come. I don’t think so.”

Mr Mpiani’s cry over the agony of his mother at the news of his being hauled before the BNI and possibly prosecuted brings back into sharp memory the pain expressed by the mother of Mr Kwame Peprah on the day the Quality Grain Trio were sentenced to jail.

It would be recalled that Mr Kwame Peprah’s mother went through a painful agony during his son’s trial under the former NPP government, which agony was climaxed by the sentencing to jail of the former finance minister under the Rawlings-led NDC government to a 4-year jail term by an Accra Fast Track High Court for causing financial loss to the state.

Mr Kwame Peprah’s helpless mother wailed uncontrollably in a painful agony at the court premises on seeing his son being led to jail like a sheep to the slaughterhouse. Unfortunately, that did not stop his son from being sent to jail.

Mr Peprah together with Mr Ibrahim Adams and Dr Sepa-Yankey were pronounced guilty in the infamous Quality Grain case by an Accra Fast Track High Court and sentenced to jail by Justice Kwame Affreh.