While ex-President Jerry Rawlings preached austerity to a hapless Ghanaian population, decimated by the worst economic malaise to hit this country since Don Diogo D’Azambuja sailed to Elmina in 1482 and laid the foundation for the imbalance of trade with Western partners, at least one key member of the former Head of State’s Men of Integrity, was acquiring an empire in Europe and America, at the expense of the Ghanaian tax payer.

Public Agenda can reveal that Augustine Kwame Addo, a top National Democratic Congress (NDC) member, cited in a number of fraudulent deals while a Member of the Board of Directors of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust, has bought properties in the United Kingdom and Europe running into several billions of cedis in foreign exchange.

One property alone, owned by Kwame Addo in Wellington, Somerset in the English countryside, is valued at two million pounds sterling (about ?20 million). Another in Virginia, United States is valued at nearly $1.5 million (about ?10.5 billion). It is located at 9792 Thorn Bush Drive, Fairfax Station Va. 22039. It is registered in the name of Augustine Kwame Addo and his wife, Begnina A. Addo.

Public Record on the Virginia property held by the Metropolitan Information Systems Inc, available to Public Agenda, indicate that the single family detached property measuring 221,163 square feet is on a 5.08-acre land, in what could be described as the richest enclave in the United States.

The two-storey mansion, built in the year 2000, has 13 rooms. It has four bedrooms, four full bathrooms and one half bath. The property was acquired from Renaissance At Roseland 1 Winchester Homes Inc., with a transfer of $1,045,273 on July 18, 2000. Earlier on August 3, 1999, the Addos had made an initial deposit of $179,036.

The Title Deed on the property between Renaissance At Roseland Inc, a Virginia Corporation as the Grantor and the Addos, described in the Deed as husband and wife, was prepared on July 18, 2000 by John T. Frey, Clerk at the Fairfax County Circuit Court.

The NDC guru is said to own a chain of properties in Accra and other parts of the country and the Public Agenda is on their trail. A former police officer in charge of licensing firearms, Kwame Addo, who hails from the Volta Region, was plugged from virtual financial obscurity and put on the Board of SSNIT when the country came out of over one decade of Culture of Silence into a democratic dispensation, under the same leadership that ruled this nation with iron hands.

According to evidence available to Public Agenda, Kwame Addo used his political connections to engage in unfair trade with SSNIT. The Serious Fraud Office in Accra is investigating a number of cases of conflict of interest in business deals by SSNIT Board Members with various SSNIT institutions. One of the main characters under investigating, Public Agenda can reveal, is Kwame Addo.