A-G: Tsikata Took Unreasonable Risk

By William Yaw Owusu

Thursday, 06 July 2006.
The Attorney General, Joe Ghartey, yesterday told an Accra Fast Track High Court that Tsatsu Tsikata, the former Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), “took an unreasonable risk,” to guarantee a loan for Valley Farms.

He said Mr. Tsikata, in granting the loan on behalf of the GNPC, “did not use reasonable caution and obligation” and for which reason he should be held for wilfully causing financial loss to the state.

The Attorney-General who was addressing the court after Mr. Tsikata’s counsel had completed his address last week, said “in the meaning of Act 179, the financial loss was wilful.”

Mr. Tsikata has been charged with three counts of causing financial loss of about ў2.3 billion to the state through a loan he, acting on behalf of the GNPC, guaranteed for Valley Farms Limited, a private cocoa producing company and another count of misapplying public funds.

Valley Farms contracted the loan from Caissc Centrale, now Agence Francaise De Development (AFD), 1991, but defaulted in the payment, compelling GNPC which acted as guarantors, to pay the loan in 1996.

He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and is on a self-cognissance bail. Mr. Ghartey told the court presided over by Appeal Court Judge, Mrs. Justice Henrietta Abban, that the defence team had failed to lead evidence to show that the amount paid in the loan guarantee “did not come from GNPC coffers.”

“They are only talking about the law being used to charge him,” he said, adding that “there was a financial loss and it was caused through the action and omission of Mr. Tsikata.”

Mr. Ghartey said that between 1991 and 1996 when GNPC guaranteed the loan and when it paid the loan, Mr. Tsikata took no steps to correct the defect, in a form of counter guarantee saying “he cannot deny that GNPC belongs to the state and therefore a loss to it is a loss to the state.”

He said when Mr. Tsikata filed a “submission of no case” at the Supreme Court, both the majority and minority panel members ruled that there was a loss which was caused by the accused.

He also said that in guaranteeing the loan, Mr. Tsikata, through the GNPC, went outside their core objective of petroleum and ventured into cocoa production and this had not been challenged by the accused.

The case was adjourned until July 7, for the prosecution to conclude its address.
In a related development Mr Tsikata has filed a motion for an order from the Court of Appeal to compel the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to testify in the case.

The Fast Track Court had ruled thast the IFC was “immune” to the processes of the country’s courts and this case has been adjourned to July 11.