Editor of the Weekly Standard newspaper and former Special Assistant to Ex-President Rawlings, Victor Emmanuel Smith, has confessed that he has no evidence to support his recent publication which sought to imply that President Kufuor owes over $5billion to some Kuwait oil suppliers…

and that his (President's) personal properties were being appropriated to defray the debt. When asked to provide evidence to prove the veracity of his story, Mr Smith confessed he only acted on hearsay and so had no documents to back his claims. "I don't have documentary evidence, I would have told you if I had,' he intoned. Victor Smith has been serializing what he described as 'excerpts of the botched oil deal with an unnamed Kuwaiti company', and claimed that it had landed the President a whopping cost of $5.5 billion dollars in arbitration fees, $4 billion of which he alleged that Kufuor had been able to offset.

Obviously peeved by the publication, the Presidency Wednesday denied the allegation, describing it as a 'blatant, wicked lie.' Press Secretary to President Kufuor, Mr Andrew Awuni, insisted that the Head of State neither has any dealings with any Kuwait oil suppliers nor does he own any oil company. The Presidency therefore, gave Victor Smith and the leadership of the opposition National Democratic Congress 14 days to provide evidence to back the allegation or unreservedly retract same otherwise, 'we will advise ourselves.' The Presidency warned that if the party failed to meet those conditions, there were a number of options available to it, to seek redress, including legal action.