ANANE, 3 OTHERS FOR COURT

Monday, March 29, 2010 (Lead Story)

A FORMER Minister of Transport, Dr Richard Anane, and three others will be arraigned before the Accra Fast Track High Court on Tuesday for causing financial loss to the state.
Dr Anane is alleged to have misrepresented facts on Ghana International Airlines (GIA), which was then not in existence, to Cabinet and misled the then government to pay shares into a fraudulent company.
His action, according to the state, also led to the liquidation of Ghana Airways.
Dr Anane has been charged with Mr Kwadwo Mpiani, a former Chief of Staff; Dr Anthony Akoto Osei, a former Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, and Mr Sammy Crabbe, a former Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and one of the minority shareholders of the GIA.
They were alleged to have played various roles in the formation of the airline and, in the process, caused huge financial loss to the state.
Osei allegedly signed a loan agreement committing the government to a financial obligation of paying GH¢15 million to the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).
The SSNIT gave the said amount to the GIA as a loan, without parliamentary approval and at a time when the minority shareholders of the airline had abandoned the company.
Mpiani, on his part, is alleged to have authorised the release of funds into the GIA, without parliamentary approval.
They are expected to be charged with fraud, stealing and wilfully causing financial loss to the state.
A highly placed source at the Attorney-General’s Department told the Daily Graphic in an interview that charges levelled against the four would be filed at the Registry of the Fast Track High Court today.
According to the source, the four had been formally charged but it declined to state the specific charges each of them would face.
It said Crabbe, who represented minority shareholders in the company, on June 27, 2005 withdrew $1.9 million from the government of Ghana’s account, without approval from the government (majority shareholder).
It said Dr Anane declared that four companies had expressed interest in the then Ghana Airways.
According to the source, he later presented a letter of intent which was signed between the government of Ghana and the GIA to form a new company called the New Ghana Airways (NGA), although the GIA was at that time not in existence.
It said although PriceWaterhouseCoopers had rated the NGA, which had signed an agreement with the government to form the GIA, third beneath KLM and Ghanaiar, two companies which had also bid for Ghana Airways, the NGA won the bid.
It said although the memorandum Dr Anane presented to Cabinet to sign was dated September 9, 2004, the GIA was not in existence as of September 9, 2004.
It said GIA-USA-LLC was formed in Utah, USA, on September 10, 2004 and further pointed out that Dr Anane misrepresented those facts to Cabinet and fraudulently misled it to pay for shares into a fraudulent company.
According to the source, Mpiani, on June 2, 2005, wrote to the chairman of the government task force on Ghana Airways Limited authorising the task force to take all necessary steps to put the airline into formal liquidation.
The GIA was subsequently formed as a joint venture between the government of Ghana and GIA/USA/LLC, as a result of which the GIA had its maiden flight on October 29, 2005.