I’m Not Worth $50m – Rawlings

Former President Jerry John Rawlings has refuted claims that he is worth $50 million.

He said at an event to mark the 39th anniversary of the June 4 Uprising in Accra that he and his family never acquired a foreign account after his rule as President.

“When I came out of office, together with my wife, we never even had a foreign account to say we have even $10 inside it. Today, when they’re tabling all the billionaires and the millionaires, they put Rawlings at number 9, I think, or second to last, and they give me $50 million,” he stated.

Mr Rawlings said, “meanwhile, the last man behind me is Kofi Wayo … They’ve given him either $30 million or $3 million, as for Kofi Wayo I know he’s so broke that I believe he must have paid the newspaper: ‘Put me there and put 30 million against my name.”

He continued: “I’ve answered that kind of thing on three occasions and I’ll answer it again. They play these games as a way of white-washing themselves, the genuine and the thieves amongst them, so that if Rawlings can have $50 million, there is nothing wrong with it. If I had it, I would have worked honestly for it, but I don’t. They have it, the thieves and the honest ones, and they want it to be acceptable; they want it to look normal without anybody asking: ‘How did you come by it?’”