It's Official: “IFC Banza” ...End of the road for $1bn fortune
The President has now secured alternative due diligence reports that have given him the correct information about the scope and breadth of the shenanigans behind the IFC bounty hunters. And he is broken-hearted. That's according to the Chronicle.
It is now certain that his dream to fund a massive regeneration and development of the nation that slipped into decay under the previous administration is now dissolved into a bad dream. His front-line ministers, cheered on by the press, have set a global record in exhibiting unprecedented monumental incompetence and lack of commonsense when it mattered.

President Kufuor was said to be distraught and inconsolable when he read the report barely a couple of days at a time the two men he relied on to examine the IFC proposal and report their due diligence were now here within reach of his weighty fists.

Messrs Osafo Maafo and Paul Acquah, the Central Bank Governor, with the geek-like exterior, are both attending a meeting over the West African Monetary Zone programme. The President had also put in a brief appearance in Guinea.

Hon Osafo Maafo and Acquah, in particular, were the prime candidates who put in appearances in Parliament and spectacularly persuaded the NPP, CPP and PNC MPs to vote en-bloc in true wet blanket fashion (unquestioning zombies) to deliver the nation’s sovereign guarantee to the shadowy goons from IFC even when they did not know their own backgrounds.

Pieces of information emerging through the craters show that the first sign of trouble emerged when the treasurer of the Bank of Ghana returned from Dusseldorf, Germany, with bare hands to report to his bosses at the High Street that he could not even set up an account for the company that had been registered to manage the trust fund.

Dresdner Bank, by Konig’s alley, would not accept their business! (the bank is reputed to be the largest after Deutsche and possibly Commerzbank). Chronicle contacts close to the Accra office of the German embassy hinted that, even the effort to get visas for the bank officials – treasurer and Acquah were fraught with problems as the letter emanating from Europe was seriously discounted by the embassy staff because of its dodgy make-up.

Germany, like other European countries, has tightened bank account opening procedures out of fear of bank fraud and numerous stings by non-residents who cannot be traced. A Trustee Fund had been set up and a company registered to receive the funds and disburse accordingly.

As previously reported, the members include Mrs Cecilia Bannerman, brother of NCS Dr Nii Narku Quaynor, publisher and computers-related businessman and former aide-de-camp of GNPC’s Tsatsu Tsikata when the going was good. The others include Senior Minister J.H. Mensah who eloquently beat up the protesting brave minority in Parliament over the IFC loan debate, deriding them on the floor of the House, as fellow Minister, Kwamena Bartels, gave him covering fire.

The other is Professor Eddie Ayensu, the man who brought the deal to the government, but whose dossier in the Chronicle vaults, includes a controversial business alliance with the financially powerful and internationally connected Teye Rocksell over the Kibi bauxite mine, plus funny business liaison with Dr Kwesi Botchwey in London more than a decade ago (Hint! Hint! Debt buy-back schemes a la former Eastern Germany-railway wagons deal).

It will be recalled that Teye Rockshell, an arch-foe of former President Jerry Rawlings, who lives in three of the choices Terraconi Estates, East Legon, is the man behind the sensational Delta Foods case which cost the government of Ghana some ?10b! (The Speaker of Parliament, Peter Ala Adjetey was his lawyer and his fee stepped over the ?900m mark! Details later on another rampage at SSNIT).

The Chronicle has also gathered that the dossier presented to President Kufuor showed that the profile of the men on the IFC board looked very funny. Incidentally, the only IFC board member who has publicly spoken to Chronicle and also to a local FM station (Joy FM), H. Schneider, is said to have two other brothers one of who has a few problems with the law in the US or with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over dubious financial transactions. His name appears to have featured more than two times on the SEC black book of dodgy details.

Though the Chronicle was not able to obtain details of the files with the President, a quick recourse to the paper’s intelligence sources came up with a report that the archives of the US SEC has filings dated 21 January 1998 against one D.E. Schneider, a (German) resident of Worland, Wyoming, detailing a High Court judge issuing a restraining order prohibiting the sale of bonds purportedly backed by gold issued in the 19th century by Chicago Saginaw and Canada Railroad Corporation.

It was a deal swung by Schneider. The bonds were later ‘found to be worthless having a value only as a historical memorabilia.’ Other fanciful but worthless companies that accrue to the network operated by Schneider and his partners in the scheme include Global American Prosperity Foundation and Financial Sovereign Acquisition Trust.

What is not clear is whether this Schneider listed in the SEC archives is one of the brothers whose details have been furnished to the President. The data retrieved from the SEC database in the US however, is a dead ringer to the now fraudulent woolly scheme that was championed by Osafo Maafo and the Governor, who has now been exposed as a dangerous, incompetent person whose leadership at the Central Bank should now be a source of deep concern to every Ghanaian taxpayer. (His resignation or dismissal is a forgone conclusion.)

It will be recalled that the last report on IFC published by the Chronicle detailed a sighting on a British Airways first flight of Prof Ayensu (He always flies first class) stopping at Dusseldorf to rendezvous with Acquah and another Bank of Ghana official. He was later to continue to Luxembourg to ‘wrap up the deal’.

Late last week, the Minority leader, Alban Bagbin, became the subject of heavy insults and vitriol in Kumasi when he talked down the IFC loan on one of the FM stations there. Clearly, the nation had been so emphatically deceived by the President’s men about the imminent release of the $1bn facility that they were not prepared to listen to what Bagbin and his fellow travellers had been courageously saying- that it was bogus hoax!

Even when yours truly, as is customary over the years, raised the alarm, many arm-chair pundits with no shred of experience or expertise in those matters rubbished contrary reports. The extent of the collateral damage of the IFC imbroglio, plus the fissure it has engendered in World Financial capitals- Britain, France, Washington, Tokyo, Denmark- has not been reported yet.

The embarrassment that the President’s men have caused him by feeding him trash while pursuing their personal agenda and interests must greatly mollify him. Indeed, his own brother-in-law, Dr Osei Akoto (Special Advisor to the Minister) famously gave dates when the money will be drawn down, and released figures that had been earmarked for various Ministries to the consternation of the IMF/World Bank.

The trusting Ghanaian public did what was expected- trusted the word of their elected representatives and disregarded the opposition howls. Trust and integrity is cardinal to the office of any Central Bank. Governor Acquah has blown it and it will be hard to tell if anybody will buy a used car from him. As for Osafo Maafo…….

The President last month responding to fevered questions over the IFC loan told the press- now being drawn and quartered- that he would report back to them on developments.

The opposition, led by John Mahama, with his sledge-hammer of a pen, and Kwabena Adjei, will be pissing on the graves of the four unwise men. With justification. The cost to the nation is incalculable- not only in financial terms as was the case in the India debacle, but in ruined sovereign integrity.

There is $170m more HIPC funds that Osafo Maafo may have been able to obtain if he had devoted his time to those pursuits. Whichever way the cookie crumbles, heads may have to roll, but Eddie Ayensu is certainly out in the clear. He is not funded by the Ghanaian taxpayer. All those travel details will come out.

This week, the nation may get the final word on the most damaging financial scandal since the Fante chiefs asked the European traders to return to Cape Coast for hoarded human cargo of slaves, even long after the abolition of the trade in America.