Agyapa-Styled Takeover of Ghana’s Oil from GNPC Exposed

A dubious racket is cooking up at the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) where an opaque private company registered in the notorious tax haven of the Cayman Islands is reportedly being used to clandestinely hijack part ownership of GNPC in the Jubilee and TEN oil fields.

The pattern of the suspected hijack of GNPC’s stake in the oil fields is eerily similar to the suspicious attempt by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta and the Akufo Addo administration to appropriate Ghana’s multi-billion-dollar gold and mineral royalties to for an opaque group of investors the UK’s tax haven of Jersey in the infamous Agyapa Royalty scandal.

The unfolding event at GNPC has seen the Board Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer of GNPC, Freddie Blay, and Dr. K.K Sarpong respectively acting as directors for a curious private company taking over GNPC’s 7% stake in the lucrative oil fields.

On April Fool’s Day (April 1, 2021), GNPC acquired a 7 percent Commercial Interest in Jubilee and the TEN oil blocs, from Occidental Petroleum (OXY) at a cost of cost $199 million, but according to GNPC, OXY eventually settled on a final cost of USD165 million for the offloaded interest.

In a statement from GNPC, the acquisition adds to GNPC’s existing Carried and Participating Interest (CAPI) of 13.64 percent in the Jubilee Field, and 15 percent in the TEN Field and that the interests acquired will be transferred to GNPC’s subsidiary, the GNPC Exploration and Production Company (GNPC Explorco).

“With this acquisition GNPC Explorco will become part of the contractor group for the two blocks, together with Tullow, Petro SA and Kosmos (who also bought an additional interest in the two blocks),” GNPC said.

However, a paper trail followed by petroleum sector think-tank, African Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) showed that the statement claiming the interest was going to the state-owned Explorco was a fluke and that it is rather going to a new private company called Jubilee Oil Holding Limited with the two key personalities at GNPC as the main directors.

Jubilee Holding Limited was registered in September 2021 in the Cayman Islands to hide its true beneficial shareholders.

“This raises the bar on opacity and worsening accountability associated with the Corporation [GNPC] ….ACEP can confirm that the Corporation is not assigning the interest to Explorco. GNPC at the time of communicating to the public knew that its intention was to assign the interest to a company called Jubilee Oil Holdings, registered in the Cayman Islands, with Dr. K.K. Sarpong and Mr. Freddie W. Blay as directors. It is important to note that the representation of the CEO and Board Chair of GNPC, with their names in the General Registry of Cayman Islands, is not enough proof that GNPC is the owner of the Jubilee Oil Holdings,” ACEP revealed as it raised red flags about the deal.

Already, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta had reportedly illegally dipped his hands into Ghana’s crude oil proceeds to finance the deal for Jubilee Holdings Limited.

There is some US$ 16 million tax settlement in the deal, ad in October 2021, Africa Intelligence reported that GRA, by extension the Finance Ministry, intends to lend the tax settlement amount from the Oxy transaction to GNPC to offset the acquisition cost of the 7% interest with no recourse to the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA), Act 815 as amended.

“Should Finance Ministry Lend to GNPC? The answer is a simple no. In the current economic context of high-interest rates and the weak primary balance of the country, a more optimal and innovative approach to financing the 7% interest is required. ACEP appreciates that GNPC is broke, and its weak financial position exposes it to a high cost of capital. However, given that the Jubilee and TEN fields are producing assets, they could be leveraged, especially through creditworthy partners to finance the acquisition. Any percentage of savings through innovative approaches is better than using tax revenue needed for the national budget in an austere period,” ACEP noted.

How Jubilee Holding Limited came into the picture is not clear. Also, it is not clear when or why the decision was made for the company to be set up to take over the responsibilities of Explorco. The capacity of Freddy Blay and KK Sarpong to serve as directors of a company registered in a notorious haven of tax evasion is also raising a lot of questions.

“Clearly, a company cannot operate without directors and so if that transaction has been concluded it makes sense that the director, the Board Chairman and the Chief Executive of the GNPC will be made the directors of that company,” said the Deputy Energy Minister, Andrew Egyapa Mercer in justification of the convoluted insertion of Jubilee Holdings Limited into the picture.

Ordinarily, sceptics may not have raised many eyebrows, but this is the umpteenth time that it appears a major deal of a state corporation is having a questionable insertion of close associates of President Akufo Addo in a so-called Special purpose vehicle, like the Agyapa Royalty deal that former Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu described as fraudulent.

Also, the role being played by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta is making the entire deal even more suspicious. It is an open secret that Ken Ofori-Atta has direct interests in several oil deals of the government of Ghana and has been fingered in manipulating certain processes that curiously saw his personal interests served in some of these deals.

For instance, he has been cited in international investigative reports to have directly manipulated the petroleum exploration deal between GNPC and ExxonMobil in the Deepwater Cape Three Points block offshore Ghana to insert GOIL, a company that has three of his personal companies as significant shareholders, namely- Data Bank Asset Management, Enterprise Life Assurance Company (ELAC) and Enterprise Tier 2 Occupational Pension Scheme.

On 7th September 2018, Exxon Mobil selected Griffon Energy Africa Limited as its preferred local partner in the ExxonMobile deal. Griffon, owned by Sam Jonah, the iconic former Chief Executive of Ashanti Gold Fields.

But international investigative journalists, Open Source Investigations, a few years ago revealed how paper trails show how Ken Ofori-Atta had directly caused Griffon to be kicked out of the deal and GOIL inserted, despite Griffon having won the contract as the local partner to ExxonMobil.

A similar strategy played out in another oil exploration deal with Norwegian Aker Energy, where the local partners of Aker were substituted by Quad Energy mysteriously. Incidentally, Quad Energy is owned by Babatunde Ampah who served as a top executive in Ken Ofori-Atta’s private company, Databank Financial Services.

Source: whatsupnewsghana.com