Former President John Mahama has said the architects of the Agyapa Royalties deal are cronies of President Nana Akufo-Addo and hinted at cancelling the agreement should he win the 7 December 2020 polls.

In an interview on TV XYZ, Mr Mahama said: “Agyapa is a very shady deal”, asserting: “It is a theft of Ghanaian royalties”.

“If I become president, I will not accept that deal”, he threatened.

According to him, “the people of Ghana do not accept that deal” since, in his view, “it is against the money laundering rules”.

“If you look at the people who put this together, they are people close to the president and already they have been paid two million dollars”, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress claimed.

“This president and his family think they can do anything and get away with it,” Mr Mahama said.

Mr Mahama also said his next government will “investigate PDS, especially when people related to the President were involved in structuring the PDS deal”.

“There is enough evidence to investigate PDS and prosecute”.

Parliament passed the deal two weeks ago by approving five agreements to allow the country to derive maximum value from its mineral resources and monetise its mineral income accruing to the country in a sustainable and responsible manner, in line the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) Act, 2018 (Act 978).

The approval will enable the country to use a special purpose vehicle, Agyapa Royalties Limited, to secure about $1 billion to finance large infrastructural projects.

In line with that, Agyapa, which will operate as an independent private sector entity, will be able to raise funds from the capital market, both locally and internationally, as an alternative to the conventional debt capital market transactions.

The funds, which are expected to be raised from the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE), will be long-term capital, without a corresponding increase in Ghana’s total debt stock and hence without a public debt repayment obligation.