'The GH¢3 Billion Lie': Manasseh crafted the contract he used in the exposé - SML

The Technical Assistant to the Managing Director of the SML, Richard Marfo, has made allegations against investigative journalist Manasseh Azure.

According to him, the contract details used in the exposé titled 'The GH¢3 Billion Lie' were fabricated by Manasseh.

This comes in after an investigation piece by the Fourth Estate titled, 'The GH¢ 3 Billion Lie', accused the Ministry of Finance of awarding a $100 million contract to Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML), to monitor Upstream Petroleum Production and to Audit the value chain of Minerals and Metals Resources.

The investigation raised concerns about SML's lack of experience in the petroleum industry and also getting paid for no work done.

Richard Marfo, responding to the claims, stated that Manasseh deliberately misrepresented the contract details, emphasising that the contract was for five years, not the reported ten years.

He accused Manasseh of redacting and manipulating information to create a false narrative.

“Manasseh has had PR works in the public. But we also want to use a little time to clarify some things. The first thing I want to put out there is the context in which Manassseh asks the questions as if he is doing a documentary within the downstream and those are the answers he had.

“The next is that the contract in question was 10 years. What Manasseh did has done a big and deliberate disservice to SML. A contract of five years, he went to the page where it stated 10 years, redacted whatever is in there. You can get this on section 3.1 of the contrat. Look at it carefully even the word contractor, he wrote there, contract. He put this thing out there and claims that that is the contract,” he said this on Joy News programme, which was monitored by GhanaWeb.

“...I am asking, where is that source coming from? We are claiming that Manasseh put those words together and at the right times, we will seek legal redress on those matters.”



Background

Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML) strongly refuted allegations of being awarded a 10-year government contract, asserting that the duration of the contract is, in fact, five years.

Dismissing claims made in a documentary by an Accra-based media outfit, SML challenged them to produce any contract evidence supporting the assertion of a 10-year agreement.

In a released statement, SML categorically denied receiving $100 million annually from its contract, labeling such claims as "purely a figment of the author’s imagination and not factual."

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