Majority Leader in parliament who doubles as the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei-Kyei Mensah Bonsu has said that the investigations into the Airbus scandal are not in any way a means of persecuting former political appointees.

President Akufo-Addo in an official letter directed the Office of the Special Prosecutor to “collaborate with its UK counterparts to conduct a prompt inquiry to determine the complicity or otherwise of any Ghanaian government official, past or present, involved in the said scandal.”

The president’s directive has been described by many elements in the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) as a deliberate attempt to persecute appointees in the erstwhile Mills/Mahama government.

But according to Osei-Kyei Mensah Bonsu, the president’s referral of the scandal to the Office of the Special Prosecutor does not qualify as political witch hunt as many have already tagged it.

In his opinion, the investigation is targeted at ensuring that due procurement laws were not breached in finalizing the deal, as well as making sure no financial losses were incurred by the state.

He also noted that the probe would also establish a good reference point for similar future deals.

“...It is not about witch hunt, I don’t want us to go on that tangent. It is about having value for money so that going forward as a country we’ll do what is right...”

He was however quick to add that “...the Special Prosecutor is competent enough, if the Auditor-General will also do a good job on that perhaps we should also go and resurrect those matters from that end. EOCO can also assist the Special Prosecutor because the Special Prosecutor can only prosecute when he is furnished with relevant information. But I think in this case the Attorney-General’s department, the EOCO and BNI should combine efforts...”

The minister was speaking in an interview with CitiFM’s Umaru Sanda on Point Blank.



About the Airbus Bribery Scandal

A 31st January 2020 judgement of the Crown Court at Southwark, in the United Kingdom, between the Director of the Serious Fraud Office and Airbus SE, in which the European multinational aerospace corporation has been fined $3.9 billion for the payment of bribes to secure deals in five countries, including Ghana.

According to the Statement of Facts in the case, between 2009 and 2015, a number of Airbus employees made or promised success based commission payments of approximately ES million to Intermediary 5, who is said to be a close relative of a high ranking elected Ghanaian Government official (Government Official 1).