Moves to hide Secret Accounts

REPORTS REACHING the Daily Guide indicate that there are frantic attempts by some group of Ghanaians who used to hold public office to move millions of US dollars from certain banks outside the country.

According to a source which disclosed this to this reporter, security intelligence from the US and other European countries have cautioned the Kufuor Administration to be wary of such huge money transfers from within and outside the country.

The source actually mentioned the names of some influential personalities in the country as being involved in these huge money transfers.

According to the source, monies are being hidden or transferred in view of rising fear or apprehension predominantly among some former government functionaries alleged to have amassed illegal wealth.

These persons are said to have stashed the monies in foreign banks, particularly in Switzerland and France, and are moving to hide traces of the monies for fear that they would be investigated.

The source disclosed that between February and November 2001, over $11.2 (?89.06 billion) was surreptitiously withdrawn from a foreign account held in France by a former top public officer in Ghana.

Curiously, until November 2000, according to the source, this account ($11.2 bn) was pregnant with huge and regular lodgements (payments) but the payments ceased in the later part of December 2000, before the second round of Ghana’s Presidential elections.

These irregular transfers were allegedly being done in several hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time, shuttling between European nations and some countries in the West African region.

The source mentioned particularly banks in Equitorial Guinea as serving as safe havens for such secret accounts.

The source claimed that the only account that has not been tampered with is one which has a current balance of $5.6 million (?40.48 billion) stashed in a bank based in the French capital, Paris.

The identity of the said owner has been changed several times since December 2000, thus making it difficult for the investigators, an American company with a branch in South Africa, to put a finger on the actual owner of the said account.

The Daily Guide was told that colossal savings amounting to $25 million (?200 billion) was allegedly transferred from a Paris account into an off-shore account in late December 2000. Strangely, claimed the source, the ownership of the said account also changed in late December 2000.

New signatories were thus introduced ostensibly to outwit prying eyes should a new government decide to launch a scheme to trace such hidden foreign accounts.

That’s not all. Some standing in-flows into the said account were also allegedly cancelled and certain long-term investments were thus converted into cash and withdrawn with the speed of lightning, the source indicated.

The good news, according to the Daily Guide source is that, one of the companies which allegedly lent themselves to be funnels through which the monies were paid into those hidden foreign accounts has volunteered to give evidence under a plea of immunity should the matter end up in court.

According to the source, the foreign intelligence had issued a friendly caution to the Kufuor Administration some time ago, to be wary of such strange money transfers because they had a premonition that such strange, frantic and irregular transfers of huge monies in hard currencies by people who used to be in government could be used for subversive activities to threaten the foundation of the one-and-half year rule of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and thus deal a debilitating blow to the country’s fledgling democracy.

Recently, a Ghanaian newspaper linked the former First Lady to a foreign account in Austria, but she denied it in a rejoinder to the Daily Graphic last year.

The former President, Flt. Lt. John Rawlings, has also said he owned not even a pin. He told Ghanaian nationals in Equitorial Guinea about two years ago that he did not have a single dollar account.

But some ex-government officials, including Mr. J.H. Owusu Acheampong, Ex- Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dan Abodakpi, former Minister of Trade and Industry and several others, are known to have benefited from friends taking care of their children’s education abroad.