The flagship anti-corruption Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) established and operationalized in Ghana in February 2018 cannot be allowed to covertly interfere in the 2024 elections by using the 8 August 2024 OSP Airbus SE-Ghana corruption report for political influence operations or information operations because one of the core mandates of the OSP is to investigate and prosecute corruption offences intended to interfere with free and fair elections.
The timing of the OSP report to coincide exactly with the third anniversary of the assumption of office by the Special Prosecutor was intentional and cannot be a luckless coincidence. While the OSP report serves the NPP Government their just deserts, Ghana must always come first in defence of probity and accountability under the 1992 Constitution.
The OSP Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024 does not meet the high standard of an analytical professional legal opinion from the Director of Prosecutions (DP) of the OSP to the Special Prosecutor or from the Special Prosecutor to the DP accepting or disagreeing on whether the evidence on the case docket warranted a decision to, or not to prosecute for any corruption offence. The OSP Airbus SE report partakes of a gargantuan hoax actuated by political electioneering motives and political self-interest in sidestepping an objective and critical analysis of the available evidence on the Airbus SE-Ghana Bribery investigation case docket as of November 2020 and the factual narrative in the DPA/CA of the UK/US respectively in the argumentation and conclusions leading to the closure of the case docket.
As the first Special Prosecutor to handle the OSP Airbus SE-Ghana corruption investigation, my memory aided by my analytical contemporaneous journal entries to guide and supervise the panel of investigators, and published OSP open source materials show that the independent investigation conducted by the OSP as of November 2020 corroborated substantially most of the allegations of the genesis of the Airbus SE-Ghana corruption case. The investigation established that the first time Samuel Adam Foster returned to Ghana as an adult British family man long after his adoption by Rev. Harold, and Edith Thompson at a very tender age and sojourn in the UK was on 10 June 2006 on a British Passport and gave his residential address for immigration purposes as No. 19 Agostinho Neto Road, Airport Residential Area, Accra. He came to Ghana again as a British national on 3 November 2008. John Mahama had not lived with or known Samuel Adam Foster physically growing up as child until he accompanied his mother to meet her long lost son as a married adult in London in 1997.
The Airbus SE investigation by OSP as disclosed by the case docket as of November 2020 indicated that after Mr. Foster entered Ghana on a British passport on 10 June 2006, a birth certificate was arranged for him which was eventually issued to him as Samuel Adam Mahama in Tamale and sealed in Accra in July 2006. The complete travel history of Samuel Adam Foster to and from Ghana spanning the years 2006 to 2018 including his airline flights, residential addresses, purpose of visit enabled the OSP as of November 2020 to establish that
Mr. Foster was in Ghana a number of times in January, February, April, June, July,
September, and December 2009 on his British passport during the commencement of the transaction period as narrated on the Statement of Fact and DPA of the Airbus Judgments . Samuel Adam Foster’s friend and associate Philip Seane Middlemiss came along with him to
Ghana in April, June, September, and November 2009. According to the travel history, Airbus
Employee 16 based in the Spanish Regional office of Airbus who liaised with Samuel Adam Foster, Philip Seane Middlemiss, and the former Vice President Mahama as contended in the DPA was in Ghana in July, September, October, November, and December 2009.
The results of independent investigation by the OSP disclosed that Samuel Adam Foster woke up to the fact that he had to claim his Ghanaian heritage as a citizen of Ghana in 2009 when his brother, John Dramani Mahama had become Vice President of Ghana on 7 January 2009 and the Airbus SE-Ghana first sales campaign benefitting him had been initiated. The records showed that a passport application form was purchased and paid for in his name on 6 August 2009 from ECOBANK Ghana, an application for a Ghanaian passport with Vice President Mahama as one of his guarantors was made to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for passport and supported by a letter from the Country Representative of Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership on 10 November 2009 introducing Samuel Adam Mahama as a Project Manager of the organization. The last educational institution attended on this first passport application form was “LEA MANOR HIGH UK 70-75”. A quick open source google research shows that this High School is in Luton, UK.
The Airbus SE case docket left open whether Samuel Adam Foster physically came to Ghana to apply for the Ghanaian passport, or it was done on his behalf. This was because the passport was collected on his behalf by the Country Representative who had introduced him as a Project Manager in their organization. The OSP as of November 2020 was hoping to pursue further investigation on these outstanding matters during the eventual interrogation of Samuel Adam Foster upon his arrest pursuant to the warrant of arrest against him. It was also not prudent to go after the Country Representative who had occupied public offices during the transaction period before interrogating Samuel Adam Foster. The Country Representative who wrote the introduction letter for the passport was suspected through discreet investigation to have worked as a civil servant at the Ministry of Information and at the Ghana High Commission in the UK during the Airbus SE-Ghana transaction period. This person is currently a member of parliament in Ghana.
The OSP Airbus SE independent investigation case docket as of November 2020 also disclosed that the same Samuel Adam Mahama in a second biometric passport application in March 2018 claimed that the last educational institution attended was the University of Ghana, Legon, from 6 January 1992 to 4 January 1994. The first guarantor to this second and biometric passport application was described as former President Mahama of Plot Number 6 North Street Tesano. The University of Ghana formally stated in writing to the OSP that “we have not been able to locate the records of any Samuel Adam Mahama with the date of birth provided.” The OSP as of November 2020 considered it prudent to extend the investigation only after interrogating former President Mahama and Samuel Adam Foster and confronting them with the substantial evidential facts obtained from the independent investigation case docket and other documentary evidence in the Special Prosecutor’s security safe.
The OSP Airbus SE independent investigation also established that Samuel Adam Foster took a renewable lease of a fully furnished apartment at 7 Bradford Charles Mansions, Airport Residential, Accra, for an initial term of twelve months from 1 November 2011 to 31 October 2012 where he lived anytime his UK associates and he were in Ghana during the transaction period. The OSP Airbus SE independent investigation further obtained the complete travel history of Samuel Adam Foster and his other two fugitives of UK nationality (Sarah Furneaux, and Philip Sean Middlemiss) to and from Ghana spanning the years 2009 to 2018 including their airline flights, residential addresses, purpose of visit, etc which was kept in the Special Prosecutor’s safe for security reasons awaiting interrogation of the fugitives and other suspects.
The identity and travel history to Ghana of the Regional Sales Director for the Airbus SE sales campaigns based in Spain (Employee 16) who was the linchpin in the suspected corruption offences were also obtained through the independent investigation by the OSP and kept away for future use. The OSP also established that Samuel Adam Mahama and Philip Seane Middlemiss who began working as business partners of Airbus SE from January 2009 without any consultancy agreement in the first and second C-295 sales campaigns incorporated and commenced business as Deedum Limited in Ghana on 8 December 2009 as shareholders and directors to continue working with Airbus SE and signed a business partnership agreement in the company’s name only about two years later. The OSP also obtained the banking records of this Ghanaian company. A counterpart company, Deedum Limited was also incorporated by them in the UK for the same purpose – it can be found on open source. The DPA refers to them as “Company D”.
As a result of notices for information and the production of documents from the OSP to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) information and documents were obtained showing correspondence and emails partially confirming the contentions in paragraphs 4.28 and 4.29 of the 8 August 2024 OSP report alleging, inter alia, that Airbus used Samuel Adam Foster as a conduit for messages intended for former Vice President Mahama, and that Samuel Adam Foster traded on his access to former Vice President and later President Mahama. The opportunity to interrogate them and obtain statements on caution from them on these information and documents were outstanding as of November 2020.
One example is that during the second Airbus C-295 sales campaign, Airbus Employee 16 with the date of birth of 20 May 1964 entered Ghana on 9 July 2013 using a Spanish passport. Samuel Adam Mahama joined him on 17 July 2013 by Special Flight and they both departed the next day, 18 July 2013 on the same Special Flight. The OSP investigation established that the passport used by this Airbus Employee 16 was never used by him again during the transaction period for entering Ghana. Samuel Adam Mahama returned to Ghana again on a Special Flight on 17 October 2013. The last time Samuel Adam Mahama entered Ghana on a Special Flight still describing himself as a Project Manager was on 23 November 2017 with his contact address as Office of the former President Mahama. The OSP investigation was expecting to confront the suspects with these facts during interrogation of the suspects at the time the OSP postponed the invitation and interrogation of former President Mahama from July 2020 to after the December 2020 elections. The foregoing facts resulting from the independent investigation by the OSP formed the basis of the charges against Samuel Adam Foster and his fugitive associates in the Circuit Court, Accra, and the accompanying affidavit for arrest warrants against them, leading to the INTERPOL application. The 8 August 2024 OSP report suppressed the existing facts and their utility.
The OSP Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024 does not disclose that the OSP from 9 August
2021 pursued an independent investigation aside from interviewing former President Mahama on 5 January 2024 and the four fugitives in the UK in March 2024. The OSP investigation as of November 2020 did not for strategic and tactical reasons name the other suspected Ghanaian public officials complicit in the corruption or Airbus Employee 16. Consequently, the 8 August 2024 OSP Airbus SE report which was based solely on suspects named in the OSP investigation as of November 2020 did not even study the case sufficiently to discover the identities of the public officials and Employee 16 for any interviews. The OSP Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024 shows that the interviews were sweetheart interviews eliciting the opinions and/ or beliefs of all the suspects on suspected crimes committed by them and deliberately designed to obtain unethical results.
The opinions and/or beliefs of suspects in corruption and corruption-related offences are not evidence. Once the person has been identified by preliminary investigation as a suspect and not as a witness the preliminary facts are further confirmed by interrogating the suspect and a statement(s) on caution given and signed by the suspect to constitute material evidence upon which the decision to prosecute or not must be based. A competent investigator acting professionally does not hold sweetheart interviews with such suspects, and particularly with fugitives from justice at unauthorized locations abroad. The OSP Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024 in paragraphs 5.24, 5.25, 5.26 and 5.27 shows that what took place on 5 January 2024 between the OSP and former President Mahama was a sweetheart conversation styled as interview. The OSP Airbus SE report in paragraph 5.24, for example, states, inter alia, that:
“Former President Mahama opined that he believed the allegations of corruption levelled against him stemmed from the fact that Samuel Adam Foster, his brother, was involved in Airbus activities in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa at the time, and the suspicion was always that because of that familial relationship, Foster might have been a corrupting source for influencing Government’s decision to award the supply contract to Airbus. Former President
Mahama stated that he had no hand whatsoever in the establishment of any relationship (formal or otherwise), which Foster had with Airbus.”
The crucial aspect of criminal investigation is not what the opinions and/or beliefs of the suspect are but what the investigator is able to obtain as evidence using facts and evidence obtained from prior investigation and sources to confront the suspect at an interrogation. The paragraphs numbered 5.25 to 5.27 are all what former President Mahama told the interviewer called an investigator as his opinions or beliefs without any narration of a confrontation with the evidence of the suspect’s role in setting up Samuel Adam Foster, his lost and found brother of the full blood, for the acquisition of a birth certificate and passports during the crucial transaction period to enable him to partake in the Airbus SE transaction as a Ghanaian consultant with leverage over the Ghana Government.
The narrative of the alleged interview with Samuel Adam Foster in the UK suffers from the same unprofessionalism of taking the fugitive’s statements as true without confronting him with the hard evidence obtained from prior investigation. The OSP Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024 narrates naively in paragraph 5.28 that:
“On his part, Samuel Adam Foster stated that he unequivocally denied the accusations against him that he was involved in any bribery activities with Ghanaian public officials or any individuals on behalf of Airbus. He recounted that from late 2009 to approximately 2015/16, he served legitimately as a consultant and business partner for Airbus, contributing across all its sectors, encompassing projects in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and Suriname as required by Airbus.” (Emphasis supplied)
It is shameful and a proof of professional incompetence that the OSP expected a suspect being interviewed at his chosen forum abroad not to have unequivocally denied the accusations against him.
The OSP does not even consider the Ghanaian public reasonable enough to be told when Samuel
Adam Foster became a business partner for Airbus on projects in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and Suriname and whether he produced evidence of those engagements for filing on the case docket based upon which the OSP could analyse and draw legitimate investigatory and prosecutorial conclusions. These unproven statements of experiences on aircraft projects by Samuel Adam Foster, a fugitive, who had made false declaration for Ghanaian passports on two separate occasions needed to be established by confronting him with the evidence at an interrogation and documentary proof obtained from him before being filed in the investigation case docket. The OSP at the March 2024 interview in the UK did not even attempt to establish whether the Ghana Airbus campaigns were the foundation of using Samuel Adam Foster in other countries by virtue of his relationship with the former President Mahama in those other countries. The OSP Airbus SE report at paragraph 5.30 shows starkly the sweetheart nature of the alleged interview when the report stated that:
“Foster contended that contrary to the assertion that he lacked relevant aviation experience, he obtained a Private Pilot’s License in South Africa in 2000. And that, in any case, Airbus’ criteria for business partners did not require aeronautical experience. Further, he stated that his engagement with Airbus was not predicated on family connections but on a genuine interest and understanding of the aviation sector.”
The independent investigation by the OSP as of November 2020 had established firstly that Samuel
Adam Foster in his first application for a Ghanaian passport in 2009 stated that he attended Lea Manor High School from 1970 to 1975 and in his second biometric passport application he claimed to have attended the University of Ghana from 6 January 1992 to 4 January 1994 when his first entry into Ghana was on a British passport on 10 June 2006. Former President Mahama was complicit in the misrepresentations in the two passport applications. Nonetheless, there is nothing in the OSP
Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024 offering either former President Mahama or his brother Samuel Adam Foster an interrogatory opportunity to clear the air on the inconsistencies. At least an explanation was needed why Samuel Adam Foster never listed the Private Pilot Licensing School he attended in 2000 in South Africa as part of his educational institutions attended in both Ghanaian passport applications. These lines of interrogation would have established the credibility of the suspects or could have broken the suspects down for purposes of confessions on the Airbus SE – Ghana investigation. This was what the OSP Airbus SE independent investigation was heading towards as of November 2020.
The Statement of Facts of the UK disclosed that Samuel Adam Foster and his fugitive associates worked on the sales to the Government of Ghana regarding the potential Airbus C295 sales, including liaising with former Vice President Mahama, without any written agreement from January 2009 (see paragraph 181 thereof). Samuel Adam Foster and Philip Seane Middlemiss submitted a report to Airbus documenting a January 2011 meeting in
London attended by themselves, former Vice President Mahama, and Airbus at which the C295 was agreed upon as the most suitable aircraft for the needs of the Government of Ghana
(see paragraph 182 thereof). The allegation that Samuel Adam Foster and his associate became liaisons with former Vice President Mahama without any written agreement from January 2009, appeared to be true from the travel history of the fugitives and Airbus Employee 16 (Luis Francisco Hernanperez Fernandzez) to and from Ghana spanning the years 2009 to 2018 awaiting confirmation from the interrogation of the suspects as of November 2020.
The OSP Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024 states that at the OSP interview with former President Mahama on 5 January 2024 he admitted that during his term as Vice President of the Republic, he met with officials of Airbus sometime in February or March 2011 at a formal meeting attended also by the Minister of Finance, representatives of the Ministry of Defence and the Commander of the Ghana Air Force on an official trip to London (see paragraph 5.25 of the OSP Airbus SE report). Somehow former President Mahama left out the fact that his brother, Samuel Adam Foster who had assumed the surname Mahama, and his associate, Philip Seane Middlemiss were also in attendance at the meeting which was in January 2011 and not February or March 2011. The OSP Airbus SE report does not state the results of the confrontation that took place with all the suspects at the January and March 2024 interviews in Ghana and the UK respectively as the OSP as of November 2020 hoped to do.
The citizens of Ghana are entitled to a reasonable explanation for the intentional refusal or failure or the suppression by the OSP to objectively evaluate and examine the independent investigation on the Airbus SE OSP case docket and other evidential materials in the Special Prosecutor’s confidential security safe when writing and publishing the OSP Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024. An OSP Airbus SE report containing an objective evaluation and assessment of the evidential facts available to the OSP as of November 2020 as shown hereinbefore would have served the constitutional requirement of probity and accountability in public life by the OSP. Did the investigation and prosecution divisions partake in processes leading to the 8 August 2024 OSP report or was it a one-man enterprise? We need to know!
The exoneration or inculpation of any suspects after such an objective evolution and assessment of the available evidence would not have evoked the questioning of the integrity of any of the suspects as the subjective OSP Airbus report of 8 August 2024 has engendered. Former President Mahama, particularly as a presidential candidate in the 2024 elections, and the suspected fugitive accomplices from the UK may well have good explanations and answers for their respective conduct. An objective investigation and examination of the entirety of the evidence in the Airbus SE case docket and other materials as of November 2020 and thereafter would have empowered the public to disabuse its mind of the accusations that the OSP Airbus SE report of 8 August 2024 is a gargantuan hoax, hollow, politically motivated and intended to pursue a self-serving political agenda of the OSP to interfere in the 2024 elections in anticipation of rewards should there be a change in Government.
The OSP must repair the damage done to the public and the suspects, in particular former President Mahama, by accounting for the lawfulness of the circumstances and fora for all the interviews, and the lack of objectivity in the OSP Airbus SE-Ghana corruption report of 8 August 2024. The 1992 Constitution and Act 959 demands such accountability and transparency from the flagship anti-corruption agency established as the OSP. Ghana First!
Source:peacefmonline.com