Foreign Affairs Minister Summoned

The Public Accounts Committee of Parliament will in the coming days call Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister to answer questions over a long standing damaging audit report that has made adverse findings against him.

The audit, which was conducted by Messrs. Baffour Awuah and Associates between the periods of January 1997 to December 2002, at the instance of the Auditor-General of Ghana, concluded that “the use of the NVTI as a conduit for siphoning an amount of over ¢19.6 billion (old cedis) of government funds to known and unknown persons, through huge and fraudulent payments to companies and enterprises as well as a number of individuals, is tantamount to ‘money laundering’ in some cases.”

The audit covered Hon. Mumuni’s tenure as Minister for Employment and Social Welfare under the Jerry John Rawlings rule.

The Minister had, in a 2010 interview [with Citi News] on the issue, said “…If anybody can show to me anywhere that I, Mohammed Mumuni have stolen even one Pesewa of the Government’s money, I will not only resign that day as Foreign Minister, but I will be prepared to surrender myself for prosecution in any court of law.”

He was outraged by calls by the Alliance for Accountable Governance (AGAG), a pro-New Patriotic Party pressure group, for his dismissal as Minister for Foreign Affairs.

In that interview, the former Kumbungu MP, who is seeking a return to Parliament after this year’s elections, said the pressure group was made up “of half-baked lawyers who do not know their responsibility as lawyers.”