Kyeremanteng Faces Court Action

... After CHRAJ`s rigging
The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has cleared Mr. Alan Kyeremanten, former Minister of Trade, Industry, Private Sector Development and PSI and flagbearer aspirant of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), of any wrongdoings after investigations into a petition filed against the former Minister by Mr. Kwesi Arthur.

The Human Rights Commission dispatched a letter last Friday to the West Legon business office of Mr. Kwesi Arthur, a leading member of the ruling party and former member of the Board of the Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF) – an institution under the Trade Ministry- who had filed a petition against the Minister and a Director of the trade Ministry Mr. A. S. Bekoe, 64, at the Commission.

Mr. Arthur had a few days earlier, stressed to the Commission, the need for him to be furnished with certain attachments that accompanied the response of the Minister to his (Arthur’s) original petition that cited the Minister for conflict of interest and other wrong doings with regard to the management of funds allocated to EDIF, so that he responds to them appropriately.

The Commission then assured the petitioner of furnishing him with the attachments to Alan’s response which were not made available to him and also promised him that after giving him those attachments he would be allowed some time to respond to them appropriately.

With this background, the petitioner told The Chronicle in an interview that when he was out of his office and was called by a staff last Friday with the information that he had received a letter from the Human Rights Commission, his conviction was that CHRAJ had sent to him, the attachments he had requested.

“I asked that it should be opened and read to me and to my surprise I gathered that the Commission had written to inform me that it had finished its work and that the allegations had no merit. ‘What, how can they say they have finished when they have not even given me the documents I requested and they have not received my response to some of the claims made by Alan in response to my petition?’. I just asked myself, is this how Ghana is going to be governed?” Kwesi Arthur said in an interview yesterday.

The petitioner described the Commission’s report as hollow and unconvincing and stressed that, “every one knows that CHRAJ is not the last point. I have spoken to my lawyers and we would definitely take the matter to court. At least, we know that when CHRAJ ruled on the Dr. Anane case and he was not happy, he proceeded to the court of law and I am prepared to do the same on this matter.”

The Attorney General and Minister of Justice Hon. Joe Ghartey, told Joy FM on Friday that CHRAJ had dismissed the allegation on the grounds that if any ought to take responsibility, it should be the first Board of EDIF of which the complainant was a member, because it was the Board’s responsibility to manage the Fund and not the public officials.

According to Mr. Joe Ghartey, CHRAJ, in its report, regretted that the complainant himself disclosed his identity in the media, thereby defeating the purpose of the Whistle Blower’s Law (Act 720), which provides among other things, protection for people who disclose information of public interest.

The petitioner had accused the Minister, Mr. Bekoe, on several issues including the payment by EDIF, of an amount of ¢30.6billion to and at the request of the Ministry of Trade through Mr. Bekoe, who signed for the Minister for the refurbishment of former GNTC warehouses at Adjabeng.

The Companies that were to execute the refurbishment included PSI Properties Limited, a company, which has both Mr. Kyeremanten and Justice Minister, Joe Ghartey, as Directors.

On this ¢32.6billion, Mr. Arthur indicated in his petition that it was given out by EDIF as interest-free loan to the Ministry after a protracted lobbying by the Ministry for the money to be given as a grant had failed.

“In the history of EDIF all credit facilities were approved by the Board upon the application of a Designated Financial Institution (DFI) in strict compliance with the provisions of sections 14 and 15 of the EDIF Act and that there has never been a single instance where the Board gave a loan to any single entity or institution which did not apply for one through a DFI with only two exceptions, the first to PSI Properties Limited, a company owned by the 1st Respondent herein and the second to the Ministry, headed my 1st Respondent (Alan),” the petitioner had told the Commission to stress his conviction of how monies had been given out by EDIF and obtained by the respondents wrongly.

To further buttress his complaint that the monies were released to and received by the respondents wrongly, Mr. Arthur pointed out that even though in the letter approving the facility to the Ministry, the Board Chairman had indicated in the approval letter that, “before the approved amount is released in full, the Ministry would be required to sign an agreement with the fund covering the purpose and scope of the facility.” Alan and Bekoe were said to have requested and obtained the release of the funds by the Chief Executive of EDIF without signing any loan agreement as spelt out by the Board Chairman.

The petitioner also cited the respondents and their ministry for, “non compliance with article 181(1) & (2) of the 1992 constitution in relation to the ¢32billion granted by EDIF.”

Mr. Arthur admits that the Board erred but he attributes the situation to what he said was a severe pressure mounted on the Board by the sector Minister through Mr. Bekoe.

The petitioner in a response to the Minister’s response to the original petition, also stated that under section 16 of the EDIF Act, Act 582, the Ministry of Trade which was then headed by Alan, is not even eligible to borrow or to obtain any credit facility from the Fund and, “as the 1st and 2nd respondents both of the sector Ministry, with oversight responsibility to parliament for the Fund, ought to have known this fact thus rendering the Ministry and the Board parties to a wholly illegal transaction.”

Mr. Arthur had also accused the Minister over his attempt to dissolve the EDIF Board when he had no power to do so, and actually submitted a letter written by the Minister to that effect to the Commission.

He also mentioned credit facilities approved through EMPRRETEC Ghana as the guarantor financial institution as one of the issues that the Commission should investigate since according to his petition, EPRETEC could not have had the capacity to assume the credit it guaranteed considering its balance sheet.

The Minister, through his lawyers, had submitted before the Commission that the law establishing EDIF makes it clear that the Board has total control over the activities of the fund and as such, if there had been any irregularities in the administration of the fund, the board should be wholly responsible for that since the Minister does not have any power to control the activities of the Board.

This submission was upheld by the Commission, which is currently under Ms. Anna Bossman, the acting Commissioner Mr. Arthur insists that it is untrue for the Minister to assert that he had no control over the activities of the Board and cited the Minister’s own press statement in which he made it clear that the Ministry headed by him had to intervene to stop a project that was being embarked upon by the Board.

In that press statement issued by the Minister following a publication about he having been dragged to CHRAJ, it was stated, “evidence will in due course be provided to establish the personal role that the petitioner and other members of the Board had played in promoting a joint venture project between a Ghanaian Company and a South African Company which was about to benefit from a 3million dollar loan facility from EDIF under very questionable circumstances and which initiative was aborted with the timely intervention of the Ministry.”

From this, Kwesi Arthur says he cannot trust any judgment that still insists that the Minister had no control over the activities of the Board.

If Kwesi Arthur carries out his intended decision to haul the minister before the law court over the matter, Alan would then be facing two court actions, as one initiated by WOAPP Oil mills is already under way in Takoradi.