Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw
Owusu & Rebecca Adwoa Solomon
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MoFEP) yesterday
tendered in evidence documents covering the payment of over $4million to former
First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings as judgement debt to her company.
David Agbele, counsel for the ministry told the Commission
of Enquiry investigating the payment of judgement debts that the documents
tendered provided a justification for the decision to halt fund allocated to
Calf Cocoa International Limited.
Court intervention
He said nonetheless, Calf Cocoa went to court to
secure judgment over the halt of funds and there was evidence that the company
was paid $4,150, 27.50 on the court’s orders.
The legal counsel told Sole-Commissioner Justice Yaw
Apau that the Debt Management Division of the ministry was task to administer
the loan facility secured from the Chinese Exim Bank and Calf Cocoa - which is
partly owned by Carridem Development Company Limited, the investment wing of
the 31st December Women Movement (DWM) - was one of the three companies
to benefit.
He said however, that following the establishment of
the HIPC initiative set up by the Paris Club, which could have allowed up to
90% of debts to be written off, the ministry halted the disbursement of the funds.
He said China had said they were not going to be part
of the HIPC initiative and that affected the repayment arrangement of the Exim
Bank facility.
“The servicing of the debt were halted in anticipation
of the re-arrangement. The Exim Bank decided that they would not disburse the
loan until the issues over the HIPC initiative were cleared.”
Mr. Agbele said that the document tendered were meant
to justify the ministry’s inability to disburse the funds to Calf Cocoa and the
subsidiary agreements they had.
‘Genuine reasons’
He said from the documents, the ministry had genuine
reasons not to disburse the funds but the case went through full trial and the
government lost.
He said the ministry was compiling the court
proceedings and other information regarding the transaction and how Calf Cocoa
was finally paid.
Mrs Rawlings in June, appeared before the commission to
confirm the payment to Calf Cocoa International but insisted that the amount
paid was in cedis and not dollars.
Tony Lithur who had represented Calf Cocoa in court
had earlier told the Sole-Commission that he secured $4.15m for the company
because the government at the time refused to release about $2.6million to Calf
Cocoa for its operations.
Interestingly Nana Konadu went to the commission with
a different lawyer outside Tony Lithur who secured the judgement debt for her.
The Problem
Nana Konadu had said “sometime in 2002 ending, we
wrote to the ministry informing them that we had completed everything and we
would like to start the project in 2003. It was at that time that we started
having problems of who owned the company.”
She said “politics unfortunately came to play in this
project and it was difficult to get the money. From 2003 when we were supposed
to have started manufacturing cocoa powder, cocoa cake and cocoa butter, it was
impossible to start.”
She said when things got out of hand “the Chinese sort
of pulled out because they said there was too much political interference,”
adding “we decided to go to court to fight the case in 2005 and judgement was
delivered in 2008.”
According to the former First Lady, the government
went on appeal but lost against Calf Cocoa and in 2009 “we could actually go to
the premises again.”
“From 2002 when the problem started, it has not
stopped. It carried through to the new government of 2009 and it is carrying
through in the government of today. I don’t know whether they really want to
let this place function so that we can employ the 2800 people that this factory
can employ.”
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