The Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) has denied allegations that it bribed the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Efutu Constituency, Mr Alexander Afenyo-Markins.
According to the bank, claims that it paid GH¢250,000 and additional $900,000 to the MP to drop a lawsuit blocking the issuance of an Initial Public Offering (IPO) are false.
This was contained in a letter signed and issued by the General Counsel of ADB’s Legal Department, Mr M.K. Amoakohene, and copied to the bank’s managing director and the board secretary.
The bank said the allegations levelled against Mr Afenyo-Markins were not only disturbing and shocking but appeared to be a “professionally tabulated pack of half-truths completely in sync with outright lies”.
“These are calculated distractive acts intended to derail the IPO which has already seen enough upsets,” the bank said.
The letter was in reply to allegations of corruption levelled against Mr Afenyo-Markins by anti-corruption advocacy group Forum for the Protection of Public Funds.
The group, through its solicitors, had, in a letter, asked the bank to give it the exact amount extorted and the names of ADB officers who released the money to enable it to pursue a court case against Mr Afeny-Markins.
It also asked the bank to release an audio tape on which it claimed the MP admitted receiving a bribe from the bank to drop the Supreme Court case initiated by his colleague MP, Mr Mark Assibey-Yeboah, to force the state-owned bank from launching its IPO, without parliamentary approval.
Background
Last year, Mr Afenyo-Markins and Dr Assibey-Yeboah were accused of using the suit to bait the bank to pay them huge sums of money.
It was alleged that the bank paid GH¢250,000 to Mr Afenyo-Markins to get him to withdraw the suit against the ADB to enable the bank to commence its IPO to pave the way for it to list on the Ghana Stock Exchange.
Mr Afenyo-Markins was also alleged to have confessed on a tape that an additional amount of $400,000 was paid into his account in South Africa and $500,000 paid later into his sister’s account at a bank in the United States of America.
ADB unhappy
Reacting to the alleged $900,000 payment to Mr Afenyo-Markins, the bank said it would never misapply public funds in that reckless manner, especially paying that huge amount to a single person.
“There is no way the bank will employ that quantum of funds to simply get an IPO through by any such illegal means or that the process had been threatened by a court action. At any rate, the court action came by and the bank marshalled its legal brains and eventually dealt with the matter,” the letter said.
It also stated that although it was true that a leaked tape concerning the IPO went viral, ADB had nothing to do with the content of the tape.
“…to link the tape and the content to our bank because there was an issue about our IPO, we think, is a little unimaginative,” it said.
According to the letter, the bank did not pay any money to Mr Afenyo-Markins or any person and would never pay anything to any individual.
<<Print>>