M&J Bribe: How The British Tricked Us

• The PM Knew All About Payment of Bribes
• But Turns Around To Use M&J To Smear Africa


Latest reports trickling in indicates that from Downing Street, the British government, back in the 1990s, knew all about the alleged bribes that institutions from UK, especially international companies like bridge contractors, Mabey and Johnson, were paying to some public officials in poor and deprived countries such as Ghana.

Audited reports of Mabey and Johnson came across the single purpose Ghana Development Fund (GDF) account opened at Clydesdale Bank, at the Victoria branch in the Buckingham Palace Road, the British government for some reason decided to overlook.

Although Downing Street knew about the creation of slush funds accounts to influence award of contracts in foreign countries, the offices of the British Prime Minister withheld such information, but the British government is today using the Mabey and Johnson bribery allegations to smear public officials in Africa, as recipients of bribes. It has come to the fore that the U.K. Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was on various occasions stopped by the Prime Minister from investigating and prosecuting officials of the Crown and Directors of companies that were known to be paying bribes to expand Britain’s interest in overseas.

The breaks were pulled because at the time, it satisfied the British interest, so the government of Britain condoned the practise of establishing special funds and paying bribes through such accounts.

The Informer has gathered that on one of such occasions, Mr. Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, personally stopped the anti-graft institution from continuing with investigations into the payment of bribes to some Saudi Arabian government officials, who influenced Jeddah’s decision to buy arms from U.K.

These bribes were spread over a period of ten years, by certified British government officials who needed to trade arms for Saudi Arabia’s crude oil. Although the cash for arms deal was said to be a multi-billion dollar bribe, Prime Minister Tony Blair, with the support of Westminster, the (British Lower and Upper House of Legislature) directed the SFO to look away, because the exposure of the illicit payments would have adversely affected the British interest. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC): ‘U.K’s biggest weapons dealer secretly paid a Saudi Prince an amount of over US$2 billion, for negotiating Britain’s largest arms deal. All this while, the British government looked the other way,’ because it promoted British interests, supplying ‘weapons and fighter jets in exchange for oil.’

The payments were discovered during SFO investigation, that the Defence Department ran a secret “slush fund” for the Saudi royal family so that officials would continue doing business, but Britain’s Attorney General, Lord Peter Goldsmith, halted the probe in December 2006.

Then British Prime Minister Blair, in 2007 defended his government’s actions and told reporters at the G8 summit in Germany, that the SFO investigation “would have led…to the complete wreckage of a vital relationship for our country.” From the BBC’s account, Prime Minister Tony Blair added that the investigations could have cost thousands of Britons their jobs.

The British media that were also following the story were gagged, under the guise of protecting British interest. As a result the multi-billion dollar bribery in the cash for arms deal was swept under the carpet. No English or Saudi Arabian was named and shamed. This gagging orders was also captured by The Independent.

In a hypocritical fashion, the Brits, thinking that countries like Ghana, Angola and Mozambique have no special interests, (because of their white-supremacists mindset) have today set loose the same SFO officials they gagged, and have given them a mandate to go investigating and embarrassing African governments. Leading a group of Ghanaians based in the U.K. to discuss the new twist to the M&J scandal, Mr. David Tamakloe accused the British government of double standards.

He wondered why the British government condones payment of over $2 billion bribe to Saudi Arabian officials but investigates and accuse African officials of taking bribes, and humiliating them in that respect.

Although, Mr. Tamakloe shamed the former Ghanaian public officials for allegedly receiving bribes, he questioned the motives of the British government in shielding the Directors of M&J and in the same breadth refusing to give the accused former African government officials, the opportunity to defend themselves against the allegations.

The London-based Ghanaians accused the British government of hypocrisy, for wanting to protect their companies and in the same vein not caring about the repercussions of disparaging African government officials.

“Although they are involved in bigger deals and knew this all along, why are they so much interested in using the Mabey and Johnson bribery allegations to smear and ridicule all public officials in Africa, to the extent that they have decided to sponsor them to Africa on a campaign to further rob it in? What is their renewed interest in this half a million pound alleged bribery?” Tamakloe asked.

The Editor’s Note

Since the UK government decided to expose the M&J investigations, the British media and their government have not ceased to ridicule all African governments and impugning corrupt motives on the part of African government officials, whilst they promote and cover up others such as arms for oil.

Latest revelations from the Mabey and Johnson led allegations have exposed the government of Britain as having harboured intentions in using its Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to embarrass former government officials in Africa and thereby humiliate the governments of the continent as corruptible.

At a time that the friends of Africa and some respectable African leaders are calling on the British government to redeem its promises made to Least Developed Countries, the English government has decided to run down the African governments in order to justify their refusal to release funds.

The M&J matter is expected to be used by the Brits as part of reasons for their refusal to commit themselves to releasing funds promised Africa and other poor regions, forcing such countries to run out of badly needed financial resources. This latest act of the British government was predicted by the Ghana’s Founder, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah when he predicted in the 1960’s that after ending colonialism in Africa, the elements of the regime took a different shape becoming what he described as neo-colonialism, and that the beneficiaries of the system will give it a new form in the future.

The latest passion of the British government, in embarrassing African officials, should give us all a cause to worry about what motivates the Brits. The Informer wants to know, will it not be better for us to investigate and punish our own, who we will find to have betrayed the trust we had in them? Do we need the Brits to come here and tell us what to do with our former public officials? So why are they not exposing their multi-billion dollar bribe deals? So as for Africa, we can be exposed and ridiculed? Or is it a matter of white supremacy?

We will wait for the British SFO to come back in 2020 to tell us that their Vodafone, when taking over Ghana Telecom, paid bribes to certain officials in the 2008 Ghanaian government, as they did in Kenya and other African countries they are pursuing. We know they will do so, only when Vodafone had closed down its operations in Africa. Those of us in Ghana are waiting. Stay Tuned! God bless our homeland Ghana!!!