Ameri Deal Clean – Attorney General

Ghana’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Gloria Akuffo, has given the $510million Ameri power deal signed by the John Mahama administration a clean bill of health.

She has therefore, warned the Government of Ghana (GoG) against any plans of abrogating the deal.

It is recalled that the Minority in Parliament dared the Akufo-Addo government to go to court to challenge the $510million Ameri power deal if, indeed, they can prove allegations of fraud allegedly detected by a 17-member committee set up by Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko to review the contract.

The Committee, chaired by Mr Philip Addison, a lawyer, with another lawyer Vicky Bright as member among 15 others, revealed that the contract, which was an intervention to mitigate the protracted power crisis (dumsor) was overpriced by $150million.

The Minority Committee on Energy, however, told journalists at a press conference in parliament on Monday, 3 April that the Akufo-Addo government was just up to no good.

“If they read the contract again, they would know that establishing fraud is a basis for repudiating the contract, so, if they think that by the work of their committee they have established fraud, this is not the forum to vent their complaints. They should go to the court and say that ‘because we have found fraud in the deal, we are asking the court to terminate the contract. They know they cannot do it, so what they are doing is a political agenda,” South Dayi MP Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor said.

“If you recall, they said that they [were] going to review all the power sector contracts, about 42 of them, and, so, this is the beginning and we are waiting for them.”

In a statement signed by Ms Akuffo cautioning the government over the deal she said : “However Responsible Officers of GoG executed the Agreement amid calls by a Norwegian newspaper and members of the general public of the exorbitant cost of the project. But neither GoG nor Parliament, which subsequently granted approval for the Agreement, found it necessary to conduct any due diligence that may have resulted in a better deal for GoG.

“The complaint that profit margin in favour of Ameri is objectionable has no grounding in law since the parties freely bargained and concluded the Agreement through accredited representatives and or agents.
“Neither is the notion that the agreement ought to be nullified because Ameri did not contribute any money to the performance of the agreement is maintainable in law.”

Source: Classfmonline