Wereko-Brobby's Million-Dollar Oil "Wanker"

* Criminal liability, Saharan Sleight of hand and fraudulent invoices

WOVER THE last few months, the Ghanaian public has been taken for a huge super-ride by the local media steered directly by the fallen head of the Volta River Authority (VRA), Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby.

As attention was riveted to internal matters at VRA, it afforded Dr. Wereko-Brobby the opportunity to concentrate on ‘weightier matters’- the lucrative secretive matter of crude oil procurement that has already seen $1.73 million paid out by Jabesh Amissah-Arthur with a wink and a nod from a cunning and clever Tarzan.

Not more than a dozen people at VRA or the noisy press knew anything about the oil deal.

Those in the know included Dr. Jones Ofori-Atta, Chairman of the VRA Board.

Akwasi Jones, as friends know him, has been seething with rage at the manner in which he had been portrayed as a freeloader with his exposure in the press, particularly The Chronicle, for loading up on cash and bonuses.

He suspected, wrongly, that the VRA boss had leaked documents to The Chronicle. An intelligence monitoring of his trips to UK gave him away as some of the payment vouchers listed him as having meeting with MV Atlas.

It was an innocuous piece of information to the ordinary eye, but The Chronicle knew only too well the import of that piece of information. MV Atlas is one of the vessels on charter to supply crude to VRA at its Aboadze thermal plant and which has now landed the authority in costly litigation in London. (Viz- Silverstone Versus VRA)

There are indications that Jones, knowing the full implication of this matter, clearly wants to deal with it and bring it to the fore. In this, he has an ally in another Board member and prominent industrialist, NPP powerhouse Mr. Appiah Menkah, who endured presidential harassment during the regrettable regime of Jerry John Rawlings.

The VRA staff member, who is also an insider, was the ‘shunted aside’ head of legal, Mr. Mark Addy, who as a matter of course had to be let into the mechanics of the oil deal much to the chagrin of Dr. Wereko-Brobby with whom he has been feuding. As a way of pushing Addy as far away as possible, VRA bosses snatched an opportunity of Addy’s less than prudent handling of official imprest, and leaked it to pro-Wereko-Brobby press, which then went on to hammer him with it.

A third party who was beyond the reach of the VRA clique was Kofi Coomson, a close friend of Wereko-Brobby until things went awry over Kofi’s reading of Wereko-Brobby’s handling of the VRA. He cautioned him personally but was snubbed by Tarzan.

Kofi had made a number of trips to Nigeria, his familiar haunts, and made official and unofficial contacts in Abuja and Lagos as part of his investigative and business forays.

On one such trip, he met up in the middle of the night with the former NDC minority spokesman on energy, Kofi Asante, at a cheap hotel in Abuja where they traded information on Sahara and the oil contract.

Asante’s subsequent resignation from the NDC and Parliament is still a puzzle because he appeared to have gleaned enough information to pose a problem for the majority side, and may have attracted the attention of the Nigerian Sahara boys. That may never be known. Was he settled for his silence? Curiously, Asante and Hawa Yakubu had duelled over Asante’s aggressive posturing at the ECOWAS meetings attended by Kofi Coomson. At a Sunday church meeting at Aso Rock and a subsequent lunch at General Obasanjo’s residence with 13 others, Hawa had wondered privately to Kofi as to the aggression of the then Honourable Kofi Asante.

The following day, the then Minister of Energy, Honourable Kan Dapaah, had been with the VRA boss to the head office of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation where Coomson had been scouring, trying for days to gain access to the right people at that impenetrable glass fortress.

A note from a professional colleague and Christian brother, Izeze, the Managing Editor of the leading newspaper in Nigerian, The Guardian, had helped in easing the way into NNPC.

Dapaah’s visit with Wereko-Brobby had something to do with official discussion on the West Africa Gas Pipeline Project. The Ghanaian team were flown to and fro the Abuja meeting in a private jet belonging to Chevron.

The Chronicle eventually secured a copy of the contract that has formed the basis of the fraud that has been perpetrated by the Nigerians on VRA, and by extension the people of Ghana.

Now, The Chronicle is in a position to confirm that the man portrayed by the press in Ghana as an omniscient superman and who should be returned to office after being whitewashed by his school mate, the aged Auditor General, Dua Agyeman, was not altogether above board in the sleight of hand perpetrated by the Nigerian boys.

Wereko-Brobby by his actions and acts of omission, actively and studiously supported Sahara Energy Resources in their dubious and questionable effort to exploit the taxpayers of Ghana and disgrace the NPP government in the bargain.

In a letter dated July 14, 2003, the almighty Tarzan wrote to the VRA committee set up by the Board into Sahara Energy Resources inter alia:

“It is almost certain that the communication sent to the VRA was a calculated act of fraud intended to tarnish the reputation of Sahara Energy Resources and damage that company’s business dealings with the authority.”

He did not stop there; Tarzan went on flailing wildly, looking for scapegoats and fishing for imaginary saboteurs:

“The Security agencies should be brought into this matter to address…the role of Mr. Mark Addy, Director (Legal) in the whole saga, given that he has long ceased to have line responsibility for the matter.”

“…The origins of the charge sheet titled “The need for Forensic audit at VRA presented by the Chairman to the Chief Executive and the Board.”

Curiously, Tarzan never disclosed these matters to press men who were blissfully campaigning for his restoration and clearance.

The Editor of The Daily Graphic, Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh, had cooperated with Tarzan when he set up his ill-fated Sunday Herald, by writing under a pseudonym. The state-owned paper had been turned into a sympathetic flysheet for the Tarzan cause. Sunday Herald reporters who spoke to The Chronicle confirmed that Yaw was with them. He published everything that smelt of roses about Tarzan in the Daily Graphic.

In a related case, The Chronicle is also poring over ongoing matters being handled by Ms. Angelina Domakyeerah involving an issue listed for arbitration in the United Kingdom involving crude oil issues with VRA and Sahara.

The case name is: SILVERSTONE ENTERPRISE CORPORATION AND VOLTA RIVER AUTHORITY.

Again, that is part of the quiet festering matters involving Sahara and oil transactions that had gone sour with the VRA that have been removed from the glare of pro-Tarzan press, nor to his funny sidekicks, including the so-called radio commentator, the unemployed Owula Mangortey, who offered to do PR for VRA and Tarzan.

The Auditor General, anxious to keep his job, even though he is well past statutory retirement age, dealt with none of these matters in his report to The President, save the matter involving Jones Ofori Atta’s $7,000 imprest from VRA associated to his travel with the Okyenhene to the US.

Crucially at issue is a sum of $5.3 million dollars that Sahara is wringing from VRA.

Through an elaborate paper trail, forged vouchers, fleetingly alluded to by S.A. Adamu, one of the few scrupulous men at VRA, a red mark was raised over the questionable voucher.

The voucher is one of four involving a ghost company, Rhein Oil, in the UK that Sahara was claiming as penalties due them for missed laycan. (Laycan is technical reference for failing to position a vessel at the reserved loading baying bay to collect crude oil).

The Deputy Chief Executive, the poor Amissah Arthur, handpicked by Tarzan to hold fort, had been ‘dummied’ into authorising the release of the cash by the Chief for the Nigerians. He fell for it and approved $1.73 million and this may have been one of the reasons he had to go. That has raised a question of criminal liability occasioning loss to the state. Legal authorities suggest that ‘blameless inadvertence’ under the principle of collective responsibility cannot cure that default, a matter that will be explored further.

In fact, Jabesh Amissah Arthur who had been alerted by Kofi Coomson in a telephone call in June failed to appreciate the import of his role as Wereko’s appointed acting Chief after Nduom had booted Tarzan from his tree-top perch at the VRA house.

Amissah-Arthur’s name is littered all over documents sighted and in possession of The Chronicle, including, documents in Dua Agyeman’s ‘lazy,’ so-called audit report in which he struggled to make sure every paragraph ended with “We do not find any impropriety on the part of the Chief Executive...”

Tomorrow, at VRA offices, the board that had been falsely reported by The Daily Graphic as having been dissolved will sit and review the bogus contract with Sahara.

The Chronicle is aware that Jones Ofori Atta has all the information to acquit him and the board members, and regain some modicum of respectability by reviewing the strange contract with Sahara Energy with VRA. The Tema Oil Refinery is another area.

The Chronicle will monitor tomorrow’s meeting and ensure they do the honourable thing in the interest of Ghana, and the Government - initiate legal action for recovery of illegally procured money, and boot them out of Ghana