Tsatsu's wife disputes Public Agenda's Claims

(The Weekend Agenda) -- Kudjawu & Co, solicitors for the wife of Tsatsu Tsikata has written to Public Agenda on the paper’s publication on her supposed assets in the United States and the United Kingdom. Among others, the rejoinder described as malicious, the story carried by the paper. The full text is published hereby.

“We are writing for and on behalf of our client Esther Cobbah. Our client’s attention has been drawn to a publication, which appeared on the front page of the Weekend Agenda Vol. 2, Number 7 of March 8, 2002, with the banner headline: Luxury lifestyle of Tsatsu’s wife and pal”…Esther owns a mansion and has an office in the US while Tsikata’s close friend drives three cars valued at $180,000 and owns a $1.4 million home.

In the said publication, you falsely and maliciously wrote, published and circulated among other things the following with personal reference to our client. “As the nation awaits the reasons the Supreme Court have assigned for granting the relief sought by Tsatsu Tsikata, one-time Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, which has consigned the Fast Track High Court in oblivion, Public Agenda can reveal that Tsatsu’s newly wedded wife, Esther, and personal aide Quincy Kwasi Sintim Aboagye, live in luxury in Texas, the southern state in the United States of America, where US President George W. Bush was governor until he made it to the White House.

Esther, former wife of Baah Boakye, one of President Kufuor’s recently sworn in Ambassadors, owns a mansion at 5539 Woodland Glade Drive. She also has a private office block at 11111 Wilcrest Drive Houston, Texas while Sintim Aboagye is proud owner of a $1.4 million executive mansion with his wife Shirley, at 5203 Norborne Lane, Houston, TX77069.

According to Public Agenda sources in the United States, Quincy recently moved from a home between Belt 8 North and Ranking in Houston. Both Tsatsu’s wife, maiden name (Esther Cobbah), former Head of Public Affairs of GNPC and Quincy flaunt wealth openly…”

Your writing and publication falsely and maliciously claim that Esther owns a mansion and has an office in US and you accompanied your false stories with pictures, no doubt, in an attempt to give more credibility to your claims. You intended to and were understood to give the public the impression that our client has a luxury lifestyle clearly beyond her lawful means, and that she could only have acquired the properties you attribute to her corruptly by associating herself with Tsatsu Tsikata.

The insinuation of ill-gotten gain is obvious to everyone. You further claim that she flaunt her alleged “wealth.” In an attempt to give further credibility to your false hoods and to embellish your story, you showed a picture with the caption “A house fit for a queen: Esther’s home in Houston.

Our client neither has a house nor an office in Houston. The building that appeared in the picture that you published whose address you gave as 11111 Wilcrest Drive, Houston, Texas is owned by Chevron, an international oil company. Our client only once worked in that building as the External Affairs Manager of West African Gas Pipeline Project when that project was located in that building.

Based on this picture, for you to suggest that our client has an office in the US is the height of dishonesty and malice. If you had not been actuated by malice, it would have been very easy for you to ascertain the ownership of that building before making the said false and malicious publication.

We hardly need to point out to you also that by the reason of such unjustifiable and malicious publication, which was circulated widely in the print and electronic media, our client have been injured in her character and reputation.

Having regard to the seriousness of the false and malicious statements, their unwanton publication and the wide circulation claimed by your paper, we have been instructed to write to you as we now do to demand an unqualified apology and retraction of the words so malicious and falsely written and published by you of our client in the next edition of your newspaper which in any case should not be later than 7 days from the date of this letter.

Our client requires that apart from publishing such apology and retraction, not later than the close of day on Sunday the 10th of March 2002, you notify all the radio stations, which repeated your story of your retraction and to require the radio to carry your retraction and apology prominently.

We regret to say that unless you comply with our client’s request, as above, our client has no other choice than to seek the appropriate legal remedy. The retraction and apology, which must be prominently displayed on the front page of your newspaper, must be in a form and manner agreed to by us before publication. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Agenda has however promised to be back on the issue next week.