OSP AIRBUS SE 8 AUG REPORT GARGANTUAN HOAX, HOLLOW AND POLITICALLY MOTIVATED
OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR’S “REPORT OF INVESTIGATION INTO ALLEGED BRIBERY OF GHANAIAN OFFICIALS BY AIRBUS SE 8 AUGUST 2024” IS A GARGANTUAN HOAX, HOLLOW AND POLITICALLY MOTIVATED.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
I read the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) “Report of Investigation into Alleged Bribery of Ghanaian officials by Airbus SE” dated 8 August 2024 for the first time on 21 September 2024 and was left in no doubt that the OSP report is a gargantuan hoax, hollow, politically motivated and smacks of an instrument of collusive election interference by the OSP in the 2024 elections.
The political conduct by the OSP in using the 8 August 2024 OSP report to interfere in the 2024 elections which the 1992 Constitution demands to be open, transparent, free, and fair can not be allowed to pass without accountability from the OSP. The OSP in July 2020 decided to postpone the interrogation of former President John Dramani Mahama (who had been identified by the OSP as Government Official 1 or Individual 1) even though there was overwhelming evidence implicating him in the suspected corruption offences in the Airbus SE-Ghana case because the OSP had to act professionally and avoid the perception of being an instrument of any political party to interfere in the 2020 elections. As the Special Prosecutor at the time, I was castigated by the NPP Government and accused of aiding the NDC because of my antecedents. Come the election year of 2024, the OSP ignores the precedent set by the office and published a cooked up report on 8 August 2024 intended to clear sweethearts from lingering suspicion by suppressing an objective analysis of the available implicating evidence on the case docket and selectively choosing those to facilitate the political clearance through the agency of the OSP.
Ghanaians know the number of articles I have published to ensure a free, fair, and transparent 2024 elections under the title: Nana Akufo-Addo’s Long Game....” My contribution at the 2024 UDS Harmattan School on 8 February is also available. In publishing those articles which are still available on open source, I was not actuated by disaffection or hatred for the President or the NPP. I was performing my constitutional obligation as a citizen of Ghana to defend the 1992 Constitution. I would, therefore, forfeit my claim to defending the 1992 Constitution if I glossed over the election interference manifested in the 8 August 2024 OSP Airbus SE-Ghana report. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
In the interim, I wish by this article to give the OSP the opportunity to explain to Ghanaians why the OSP deliberately suppressed an objective analysis of the implicating evidence on the Airbus SE-Ghana corruption case docket and other evidence which was locked up for safe keeping for professional reasons until they could be deployed at later interrogations as of November 2020. The independent investigation of the referral of the Airbus SE-Ghana corruption case by the President on 2 February 2020 conducted by the OSP without recourse to the Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) request led to evidence confirming the evidence contained in the Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) Judgments of the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (US) of the suspected participation of former President Mahama and the four criminal fugitives on Ghanaian arrest warrants and an INTERPOL Red Notice publication, namely, former President Mahama’s lost and found brother of the full blood, Samuel Adam Foster as Intermediary 5; Samuel Adam Foster’s friend Philip Sean Middlemiss, as Intermediary 6; Philip Sean Middlemiss’ wife, Leanne Sarah Davis, as Intermediary 7; and Samuel Adam Foster’s wife and co-director in Furneaux Aviation Limited of the UK, Sarah Furneaux in the bribery and corruption Airbus SE-Ghana case. A thorough investigation led to their identification and the collection of solid evidence of suspected culpability filed on the Airbus SE – Ghana OSP investigation case docket.
The 8 August 2024 OSP Airbus SE report in paragraph 5, inter alia, acknowledges the fact that in July 2020 the OSP sought the voluntary return to Ghana of Samuel Adam Foster (also known as Samuel Adam Mahama) for interrogation by the OSP in Ghana, since he is a citizen of Ghana, apart from being a citizen of the UK, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ghana High Commission in the UK. The fugitive refused to avail himself of the opportunity offered. The OSP, therefore, knew that as of November 2020 Samuel Adam Foster and his UK accomplices were fugitives from Ghanaian criminal justice, but the OSP offered no reasonable explanation of the authority, the forum and circumstances warranting the OSP’s sweetheart interview in March 2024 in the UK with those four fugitives being sought to be arrested and brought to justice in Ghana or should they set foot in Ghana or arrested on the INTERPOL Red Notice publication of 10 July 2020 as stated in the 8 August 2024 OSP Airbus SE report.
As of November 2020 there was an outstanding open invitation prompted by a challenge thrown to the OSP by former President Mahama, inviting him to voluntarily visit the offices of the OSP with his lawyers for interrogation even though the OSP had decided in July 2020 to postpone the Airbus SE - Ghana investigation until after the 2020 elections to avoid any perception of political interference in those elections in which he was a presidential candidate for the NDC. The reasons for the postponement of the investigation in July 2020 to after the 2020 elections formed part of the case docket as of November 2020 which was available to the OSP at the time the 8 August 2024 OSP Airbus SE report was written.
But the 8 August 2024 OSP report in paragraph 5 conveniently supressed all the documentary and other evidence related to the entry and exit from Ghana of the four fugitive UK nationals during the Airbus SE corruption transaction period. It also suppressed evidence from the bank statements related to the Airbus SE - Ghana corruption transactions the OSP independently obtained. The report further suppressed the real identity of the company used to facilitate the corrupt transaction which the DPAs disclosed as Company D incorporated in the UK and Ghana respectively, and the identity of Intermediary 8 employed as a surrogate for the two “Deedum” companies (Company D) when the Airbus due diligence linked them as relations of former President Mahama, the Government Official 1. The evidence obtained from the application for the first Ghanaian Passport No. H 2459950 issued to Samuel Adam Mahama (Foster) unmistakeably vindicated the suspicion that the application had been made and the passport issued to facilitate the Airbus SE corruption transaction, to mention just a few of the independent investigatory evidence obtained by the OSP as of November 2020 and suppressed by the OSP in the 8 August 2024 report.
The independent investigation by the OSP as of November 2020 confirmed the assertions in the DPA of the UK referred to in the 8 August 2024 OSP report that the transaction period for the Airbus SSE-Ghana corruption was between 2009 and 2015 and precisely that: “contact between Airbus and the Government of Ghana about aircraft sales began in June 2009 following an expression of interest by the Government of Ghana.” The OSP as of November 2020 had established from the Ghana immigration records of the four fugitives of UK nationality their entry and exit into and from Ghana - Samuel Adam Foster, Philip Sean Middlemiss, Leanne Sarah Davis, and Sarah Furneaux - after former President Mahama assumed the office of the Vice President on 7 January 2009.
Indeed, incontrovertible evidence was obtained showing that Samuel Adam Mahama (Foster) purchased a passport application form on 6 August 2009 with payment at ECOBANK and his first Ghanaian Passport with No. H 2459950 was issued on 25 November 2009 with former Vice President Mahama as the second guarantor to the application for the passport. There was more to the results of the OSP independent investigation to the first passport application which the 8 August 2024 OSP report suppressed as evidence which I will not disclose for the meantime. The independent investigation as of November 2020 also established conclusively and confirmed the DPA assertions that non of the four fugitive UK nationals had any professional experience or prior engagement in the aircraft business. The evidence on Samuel Adam Foster’s second Ghanaian Passport application and the resulting OSP investigations as of November 2020 are more damning and inexcusably criminal.
The OSP after 16 November 2020 did not conduct any further independent investigation except arranging for the sweetheart interviewing of former President John Dramani Mahama at an undisclosed forum and in circumstances unknown without stating how he voluntarily offered himself for the interview on 5 January 2024 after he had declined the same OSP invitation in November 2020. The interviewing of the four fugitives then followed surreptitiously in March 2024 in the UK. The OSP from 9 August 2021 could not even identify the genesis of and genealogical reasons John Dramani Mahama was suspected of setting up the corruption enabling process leading up to the Airbus SE scandal in Ghana from June 2009 as stated in the DPA which is well documented and available publicly. Only the corrupt, incompetent, unprofessional, and inexperienced OSP use excuses of lack of response to the MLA for a political agenda.
A critical study of the case docket, the other correspondence and evidence in the Special Prosecutor’s safe as of November 2020 by the OSP from 9 August 2021would have revealed that the OSP abandoned the MLA process and resorted to an independent investigation partly due to leaking moles in the Ghanaian counterpart agency. As the Special Prosecutor, I used informants to obtain the identity and particulars of some critical staff of Airbus SE referred to in the DPA as Intermediaries who flew frequently to Ghana to facilitate the transaction. The OSP also secured the identities of other suspected public officials through informants. The facts from the informants were in the security safe and not the case docket for use after the interrogation of the former President and the four fugitives.
Consequently, the refusal of the OSP from August 2021 to thoroughly investigate the Airbus SE referral cannot be put on the lack of responses to the MLA. The OSP intentionally refused or failed to investigate or suppressed the results on the foregoing available facts from the hoax and hollow 8 August 2024 OSP report either out of incompetence or for an entrepreneurial political agenda of self preservation should there be a change in government.
I am ready, able, and willing to provide Ghanaians with further information to substantiate the charge that the 8 August 2024 Airbus Report of the OSP constitutes political interference by a flagship anti-corruption agency established to professionally investigate corruption and corruption-related offences fairly and impartially under the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959) should the OSP fail to explain why it ignored or refused to objectively consider and analyse the independent investigation materials filed on the Airbus SE-Ghana case docket and the other material evidence locked up in the security safe of the Special Prosecutor to avoid leakage and handed over as of 16 November 2020 when the OSP was writing and further publishing the OSP Airbus SE report dated 8 August 2024. The OSP must be held accountable under the 1992 Constitution and Act 959 for the integrity of the 8 August 2024 OSP Airbus SE report.
The OSP needs to account to Ghanaians by stating whether the interviews of 5 January 2024 in Ghana, and March 2024 in the UK were conducted by an individual or a panel of investigators set up for the purpose and in what premises the investigation took place. The sequence of the sweetheart interviews of January 2024 and March 2024 also needs an explanation as to how the OSP arranged to interview the four fugitives in the UK and whether the interview took place in the Ghana High Commission in London or in collaboration with a recognised UK criminal investigation agency. Ghanaians also need to be told whether signed statements of the interviews in Ghana and the UK were provided for filing in the investigation case docket and the required entries made in the OSP Station Dairy. The answers to the foregoing are crucial for validating the authority and integrity of the 8 August 2024 OSP report under the 1992 Constitution and Act 959. Ghanaians may hear from me again if no answers are provided by the OSP as I hereby demand.
The content of the 8 August 2024 OSP report is subjective, a gargantuan hoax, and hollow, and does great disservice to former President Mahama by creating the perception of the OSP dabbling in the politics of election interference for the greedy self-serving interest of the OSP. It is in the interest of former President Mahama to insist on having a thorough and professional investigation that exonerates or inculpates the suspects and not this cooked one.
As an aside, I read on open source a 9 August 2024 publication by Mr. Gabby Otchere Darko who rose to the defence of the 8 August 2024 Airbus OSP report as though the OSP acted within its jurisdiction. Mr. Gabby Otchere Darko and his associates may continue to sow the wind of defending the indefensible at the OSP and reap the whirlwind.
The 1992 Constitution must be defended no matter whose ass is gored. I shall not be intimidated by any threats to my person from anybody or institution. A free and fair election is a sine qua non if the peace of Ghana has to be maintained by putting Ghana first.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
2 October 2024