General News of Wednesday, 4 November 2020

Source: classfmonline.com

Withdraw Agyapa deal – Minority

John Jinapor, Former deputy Power Minister John Jinapor, Former deputy Power Minister

The Minority in Parliament is demanding a total withdrawal of controversial Agyapa Royalties agreement.

This comes after President Akufo-Addo following findings in the Special Prosecutor's recent report directed that the deal be sent back to Parliament for proper scrutiny.

The Special Prosecutor in his risk assessment report on the Agyapa deal said the Transaction Advisor(s) involved in the deal were susceptible to “nepotism, cronyism and favouritism”.

Reacting to this, the Minority said parliament does not deal with procurement issues and so the deal must be totally withdrawn.

Minority Member of Parliament for Yapei Kusaugu and member of the Finance Committee, John Jinapor told journalists on Wednesday, 4 September 2020 that: “The minority will release a statement on its position on the Agyapa deal but just to say we do not believe the right forum to address the challenges the special prosecutor has raised is the floor of parliament.

“The special prosecutor has raised issues that confirm the issues that we’ve long raised. The issue of corruption, the issue of sidestepping procedure processes including procurement processes, the issue of conflict of interest and the issue of possible corruption and, so, parliament is not a body that deals with issues of procurement, our role is to validate or ratify agreements and, so, if there are serious infractions with procurement, its only proper that they withdraw the deal and ensure that we start with the whole process…”