FOOL'S GOLD: The IFC $1,000,000,000,000 Mirage

The childish odyssey of Ayensu, Osafo Maafo & Acquah
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"PROF., YOU realize that we also have a responsibility to tell the people of Ghana whether they can really expect this loan. The entire cabinet and the Government are completely sold on this!!"

"But you know me, trust me, the money will definitely come… sooner than the December Schneider told you, when you spoke to him in New Jersey"

"But Prof., I need something, a clue. I appreciate your insistence on confidentialities, but at least, off the record, tell me something that can assure me, your word is good but not satisfactory… I just can't go and tell the public that. At least a name of one of the banks in the consortium that is handling the fund, please"

By this time, the discussion was getting testy after 30-minute sparring session during which the Chronicle tried all the tactics in the book to tease something from a respected friend who was also bent on invoking and respecting confidentialities.

Clearly, Eddie had been upset by the negative press reports flowing from the opposition take on the IFC matter. Following a previous 90-minute phone conversation on the matter in Washington the previous month, I had just turned up on his door step in his Accra office.

There was no appointment. After all, I had been on the phone to him in his house in the US just three weeks earlier and had wrung a concession from him that he will give me an exclusive interview on the matter.

This was a matter of great public interest. The fate of the nation was now predicated on this money, and the traditional lending couple, the Bank and The Fund, was being divorced when we had not even seen the torso of the new bride.

CONTRACT Chronicle had called at least four cabinet Ministers -including Dr. Addo Kufuor, Wayo's pal Hon. Kan Dapaah, the usually thorough workhorse Hon. Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister of Local Government, Kwabena Adjepong, the Government Spokesman to lobby for a contract to do a proper due diligence on the International Finance Consortium bonanza.

(I wasn't going to do it for free since I and a couple of people set up a consultancy (KCI Ltd) after stepping down from active work as editor-in-chief of a newspaper).

It was desperately crucial for Ghana and for the political health of the Government that the money would materialise.

Clearly, the jobs of at least two people, the dour Governor, Dr. Paul Acquah and his colleague, the highly-strung Minister of Finance, Hon. Yaw Osafo Maafo, were definitely on the line if….

The President was relying on these gentlemen to check on the bonafides of IFC and the most incredible financing package in Black Africa comparable to the illusory Blay Miezah's cash lodged at the end of the rainbow.

But the gentleman who was the originator of the treasure trove story is one Professor Edward Ayensu.

He was the one Chronicle was speaking to on the matter. On paper, he is one man whose international stature arguably dwarfs Ghanaian icons of industry and academia like Professor Kwapong, Professor Allotey, Dr. Sam Jonah and Dr. Konetey Ahulu surpassed only by Dr. Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations.

Eddie, as he is affectionately called, is the current Chairman of the World Bank Inspection Panel - the highest ranking and most powerful 'non-official' of the World Bank.

Despite Chronicle persistence in his office at the airport residential junction he failed or - probably, he would say, he refused to come up with anything to this reporter to warrant lowering the flag of skepticism that has been dogging this deal since it broke.

After 10 weeks of monitoring, checking and cross-checking, interviews and consultations with both Government and opposition members including the Honourable John Mahama and Hon. Moses Asaga, Chronicle cannot conclusively rule out tagging the much heralded $1 billion loan as Fool's gold' or 'April Fool' cash.

The ever popular John was seated at the lobby of Parliament early last Month when this writer engaged Hon J. H. Mensah in a serious probing discussion on the IFC money.

John watching JH engage fellow opposition MPs in a serious discussion had nothing but empathy for the 'Old man'. 'I can understand the Old man.

They are under such pressure to find money and he has been quite open about it to us', John said with a smile, relishing the propaganda points they in the opposition were scoring over the IFC affair.

J.H. explained to me, 'Kofi, listen, our budget is about ?3.8 trillion, yes? We can only generate about ?296 billion of this, where are we going to get the difference?'.

Valid issue of concern, but it had absolutely no connection to the credibility or tangibility of the IFC money. 'Go and talk to Yaw, he has all the facts, he is holding everything, including the name of the Trustee, he suggested wearily.

JH admitted that the team that went to the US did not meet in any IFC office. He also admitted that Horst Schneider, the IFC man was mainly pre-occupied in his private business, in spares for hydraulic machines.

The question was whether a man with access to King Solomon's mines would have anything to do with flogging boilers. The only option left that has not been explored by this reporter is one of the rarest commodities in this information age. M-I-R-A-C-L-E.

HOW THE DEAL BROKE Chronicle gathered that the IFC proposal had been floating around for some time. Infact, the proposal had been presented to the NDC Government earlier in the previous Government and the bosses of the Bank of Ghana. They took a quick look at it, and shoved it into a bin.

Chronicle did speak to the topmost men at the Bank of Ghana, including the Deputy Governor Mr. Mantey about this IFC matter.

Surprisingly, Mr. Mantey was completely oblivious of the IFC facility, an unusual development over a transaction of this magnitude. He pleaded that any report on the matter be frozen till his immediate boss Mr. Acquah returns from abroad and promised to pass on the message and my telephone numbers.

Days after the Governor returned, his office was called again. No return calls. Silence. Acquah had travelled with Eddie on the same flight to Germany earlier, according to intelligence sightings.

Was he over-awed by the weight of Ayensu? Ayensu, who is the Chairman if the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research is also Chair of the Global Facility for Environment of the IMF).

When the suggestion was made to him that poor Acquah might have been awed by his stature to abandon any due diligence work, he firmly rejected it and glowed that he is the best Governor for Ghana.

WHOLE DEAL The whole deal actually came to the attention of the President one fateful April day this year. After examining it- he did as any Chief Executive would - pass it on for his men to do their due diligence and report on it to him.

He did not go directly to his Finance Minister - a businessman who run a finance company at Mark Cofie House and got into some problems at some point etc, etc.

He then minuted it and tasked his secretary to hand them over to the Senior Minister Hon. J.H Mensah, regarded for his integrity and transparency. After studying the documents, the President's Secretary Ambassador D. K. Osei also shipped them out to Professor Ofosu-Armaah of Lexcom Associates, one of the heavyweight law firms steeped in the Danquah-Busia tradition.

Ofosu-Amaah, was for many years the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana, after escaping the gallows at Nsawam, where he had been consigned for an alleged coup plot. He was a former Director of the then Special Branch, now BNI.

Two of his brothers occupy top positions at the World Bank and Ghana Commercial Bank. He also went through it with a toothcomb, as his brief was to look for any legal loopholes. He found nothing substantially wrong.

It was the Finance Minister who had the task of mulling over the package with his team that included a former associate of the Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA) and brother of the President's Secretary.

The man Dr. Osei Akoto (no relation to Ghanaweb CEO) is the special assistant to the Minister of Finance. He has gone on record to say that the funds are literally weeks away from fruition.

He is really the ventriloquist of Osafo Maafo who has effectively put his seal of authenticity on it. The Minister had also prepared the package for cabinet and sold it before an enthusiastic full team.

At another session of cabinet, the Ministers who had been briefed that the package was strictly for infrastructural development, only were made to make a case for portions of the facility.

They tripped over one another in making elaborate presentations to take a slice of the pudding. Round the table they went with knives slicing chunks of the pudding.

Kan Dapaah, the man with the biggest challenge for infrastructural development made away with just under $80 million.

Professor Kassim Kasanga anxious to fix the problems of the entire Northern Region (Upper East and West included) put in a spirited argument for $45 million.

On and on, the Ministers danced round the table sharing the cake. No hint of underhand dealing went on at all through out the process. Getting Parliamentary approval was the least of the problem.

Which MP was going to vote against a bonanza like that, especially, when it was going to guarantee an electoral victory and perpetuate an NPP Government? And it wasn't as later events showed.

It was the NDC minority in Parliament aided by the press, that forced the hand of Osafo Maafo and his men to fine-tune the package, ultimately splicing the $1 billion into three tranches, $350 m, $350 and $300, and decisively ruling out any advance fee payment.

PATRIOTISM 'It was a patriotic act on the part of the NDC', submitted a highly placed member of the National Security when reviewing the matter for caveating the deal on the side of caution. I have nothing against the NDC for raising a storm', he noted, In Parliament, it took the infinite presentational skills of Hon. Yaw Osafo Maafo and the passion of JH to whip the NPP majority to secure a 103-82 victory, and hand over the nation's Sovereign guarantee to the denizens of IFC to go and unleash the $1billion.

Significantly, and there is the catch, not a dollar in advance will be paid by the Government of Ghana. Why will the IFC Group do this then? Against the structures of the World Bank IMF, Government guarantee had been outlawed, so Sovereign guarantee was obviously a taboo.

Securing a loan with a sovereign guarantee is without doubt, one of the easiest deal to strike, and the NPP has more than a handful of highly placed gurus in the nerve center of global financial houses to mobilise such funds, like the regarded Boakye Agyarko of the Bank of New York, J.H Mensah's own political pet.

There was also another whizz kid, a young lady and veteran of the Wall Street, Judith Aidoo of Aidoo Group that has specialised in financing particularly for African Governments and Corporations.

Judith's father was, until his death last month, the North American Chairman of the NPP with Boakye Agyarko as Secretary. Judith dismissed the IFC package in minutes as unreal and highly unrealisable.

Not surprisingly, the World Bank has already put out a strong disclaimer of IFC. That did not seem to faze anybody. The IFC remains an invisible fleeting spirit - completely without trace that the funds may be 'dirty money'.

An institution that purports to have such a financial base cannot remain invisible and fly well below the radars of international financial regulatory bodies, particularly in this global networked economy.

Ninety percent of top local corporate finance chiefs expressed skepticism, and sources close to the World Bank were even more skeptical in their comments. The closest that KCi could unravel, that looked like IFC, was a South African company, Solar Finance Consortium, South Africa.

The World Bank has already put paid to the bonafides of the consortium by publicly disassociating itself from it and dismissing it.

Hon. Moses Asaga, former Deputy Minister of Finance and Hon. Dr. Kwabena Adjei, MP for the Biakoye Constituency in the Volta Region, famous for championing the Chimpanzees from US case, came close to clinching the argument against securing the Sovereign guarantee, but they lost.

The terms - three percent interest and three years deferred interest is too good to be true, but every Ghanaian taxpayer must be feeling all trussed up as long as the Sovereign guarantee is out there on treasure hunt.

The ninth wonder of the World may be taking place in Ghana in the next few days ahead when Osafo Maafo will be applauded for gambling with his head and the lives of all Ghanaians. But only yesterday, CHRONICLE put in two calls to New York that significantly justified KCi rating of the IFC fund as 'negative and doubtful'.

Akoto may find that he has been made to sing a tune, by Osafo Maafo, that may sound like music, but steeped in deceit of his uncle the President, and the expectant people of Ghana. Because this treasure really may be Fool's gold.

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