RE: MIDSEA ADMITS ACTING AS GFA AGENT

My attention has been drawn to an article on the back page of the Thursday, September 9 edition of the Daily Graphic, captioned “Midsea admits acting as GFA agent”. Certain statements in this article which refers to my person as well as Midsea Company Limited are incorrect and I am writing to put the records straight.

According to the article, “in a twist of events the management of Midsea Company Limited late last Tuesday evening admitted acting as agents for the Ghana Football Association in the Glo deal”. The article stated that the previous Friday, the President of GFA, Kwesi Nyantakyi maintained that Midsea acted as agents in the Glo deal upon recommendations by Afrisat, an earlier agent of GFA, but the directors of Midsea denied knowledge of the deal.

Let me state categorically, that the directors of Midsea did not know anything about the company acting as an agency in any deal with GFA! The directors got to know about this relationship with GFA after the story broke out, when the manager of Midsea, Mr. Anthony Cole, came to my house on the evening of Wednesday, September 1, 2010, to tell me what was behind the story. The management of Midsea acted in the name of the company without telling the directors before or after the transaction, until we had to know. There is no twist of events: management is different from board of directors: management knew and therefore would admit, but the directors did not know.

In the article the admission by the management is said to be in sharp contrast to the denial of the directors who had earlier said “they had neither dealt with or received any money from GFA”

The admission by the management of the company is not is sharp contrast to the statement made by the directors: management must have dealt with and received money from GFA from the role it played in the deal, but the directors neither dealt with nor received money from GFA, neither does the account of Midsea show any inflows from GFA.

In a statement attributed to the solicitors of Afrisat and the management of Midsea the article mentioned that it was not true that I, Professor Marian Ewurama Addy, one of the directors of the company, denied knowledge of the transaction but rather denied to engage the media on the issue because I did not have details to talk to the media on the minute to minute aspects of the transaction. This is totally untrue.

The first telephone call I had on this issue came from City FM on September 2, 2010 and I told whoever was on line that the directors did not know about the deal. In response to more questions, I asked him to go back to GFA and find out who was involved. From then on I decided not to engage the media on telephone conversations because I knew nothing about the deal that I could talk to them about. Not that I knew about the deal generally but did not know about the minute by minute details.

City FM later got back to me by a text message informing me of their search revealing the name of one Renea Williams and whether the directors of Midsea had had any dealings with this man and whether we had received any money from GFA. I replied to the text, telling him “no” in both cases, and requesting him to respect the privacy of the directors and wait for a statement from management of Midsea. I did this because I had to find out from management exactly what was going on before getting back to him.

When the manager of Midsea came to my house after the story got out, he informed me that it was one Renea Williams whom he dealt with. The man was out of the country, would return on Sunday, and he was waiting for him to return so that together, they would write a statement for the press. I agreed to that.

On Tuesday evening, the manager came to my house with a copy of the statement that their solicitors had prepared. I read it and pointed the errors in the statement concerning the directors. We agreed that I would make the necessary changes and then the statement would be published. That was when he told me that the solicitor had already e-mailed the statement to City FM, without my seeing it.

I immediately ask the manager to call the solicitor so that I could talk to him. I told him how upset I was with what he had done and we both agreed that the manager and I would make the necessary changes and the new version would be in the print media as soon as possible.

I thought the issue had been resolved until on Friday evening, my attention was drawn to this publication in the Daily Graphic, a copy of which I received this morning, Saturday, September 9th. I learnt later that City FM put the statement from the solicitors of Afrisat and the management of Midsea on their website and, of course, all the misinformation was in the public domain.

I am writing to set the record straight. I cannot emphasise it enough the fact that the directors of Midsea did not know anything about what was going on between the manager of Midsea and GFA. Let me state also that the manager of Midsea, Mr. Anthony Cole, has been a very hardworking and trustworthy individual. I am at a loss as to how he got introduced to Afrisat Company in the first place. Only Afrisat, who has been an earlier agent of GFA – as stated in the article - and GFA would know.

Thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight and I trust that you will give this rejoinder as much prominence as you gave the original article.

Professor Marian Ewurama Addy