AG's Dep't Never Worked On "IFC" Loan -- Lawyer

Ghana Palaver sources at the Attorney General's Department have confirmed that the NPP Government never sent the US$1 Billion loan agreement with the so-called International Finance Consortium or "IFC" to the Department to be worked on.

"The whole thing was worked at the political level, and the first time anyone at the Attorney General's Department knew about it was when we read about it in the Ghana Palaver", said one obviously embarrassed but irritated very senior Government lawyer at the Civil Division of the Department. The Government lawyer continued: "Given the terms of the agreement, the conditionalities and even the drafting style, there is no way it could have been the product of this Department. It makes us all look so bad, as if we do not know what we are about", the lawyer concluded, speaking to this paper on conditions of extreme anonymity.

Another lawyer at the same Department but in a separate and different interview, predicted that the Government was "going to get its fingers very badly burnt" over the agreement because according to him, "it has all the ingredients of a fraudulent transaction". It will be recalled that at the NDC Press Conference on the "IFC" loan held on Tuesday, July 9, 2002, General Secretary Dr Josiah Aryeh doubted "whether the experienced civil servants of the Ministry of Finance and the Attorney General's Department who are over-familiar with these kinds of scams actually saw and vetted this Agreement before it was submitted to Cabinet".

In an interesting twist, Ghana Palaver has learnt that President Kufuor has become so worried about the scathing criticisms of the agreement, especially the private advice he has been given by the IMF and the World Bank, that as a lawyer himself, he has taken time this time to study the agreement and has instructed his Attorney General, Nana Akufo-Addo, to completely redraft the agreement. Whether the redrafting will necessitate a renegotiation of the agreement is yet to be seen.