Adu-Boahen cited for conflict of interest ahead of vetting

Deputy Ranking Member on Parliament’s Finance Committee, Isaac Adongo, has cited Minister of State-designate at the Finance Ministry, Dr Charles Adu Boahen, for being in a conflict-of-interest situation that makes him unfit for the job.

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) legislator for Bolgatanga Central said Dr Charles Adu-Boahen’s company Black Stars Brokerage is one of two companies currently hired as transaction advisors and book-runners for government loans.

He has called on the President’s appointee to withdraw his company’s dealing with the government before his vetting tomorrow, June 2, 2021, or risk rejection.

“They are paid 0.35 per cent per value, that gives you GHS875 million in fees that Databank [owned partly by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta] and the rest have had to share from the people of Ghana. This year, the government’s total gross financing requirement is about GHS60 billion, again you can offset about GHS10 billion of that for other financing arrangement and treasury bills in the gross financing arrangement, and you have another close to GHS50 billion that would be borrowed by Ken Ofori Atta and his company and Charles Adu-Boahen and his company. In all, we expect payment of GHS210 million in fees and changes to be shared by these book-runners,” he told the media in Parliament on Tuesday.

Mr Adongo wants both New Patriotic Party (NPP) and NDC legislators to withdraw those companies immediately, as a matter of conscience.

“I am going to the extent of petitioning the IMF, the World Bank, I will petition the international investment committee and I will petition CHRAJ to look into this. I will make their issuance of bonds a murky business in 2021,” he vowed.

He added: “Only recently you would have seen that the Bank of Ghana has reported very alarming figures for our national public debt. And that figure that was reported by the Bank of Ghana excludes the three billion dollars that we recently borrowed. Even if we are to use one billion of that to refund maturing debts or to call back other bonds that were issued, our public debt portfolios would now be in the region of three hundred and twenty billion. That means that in a little of over four years we’ve added about two hundred billion to our public debt.”

He said it is becoming very clear that the phenomenal growth in our public debt is “influenced largely by some people at the Ministry of Finance who have made borrowing their private business because they benefit directly through their companies when Ghana borrows.”

“So, we are no one having to borrow because Ghana needs it, but we have to borrow because their businesses need that money in order for them to be rich. Only recently you would have noticed that the Bank of Ghana released a notice of the companies that have been contracted to be the book runners or the transactional advisors to the Ministry of Finance.”

He maintained “one would think that those companies were contracted by Bank of Ghana, no, they were contracted by the ministry of finance.

“And so Ken Ofori Atta as the minister for finance and Charles Adu-Boahen who until recently when the minister for finance returned from his sick leave was the presidents’ representative at the ministry of finance and has been nominated as a minister of state at the ministry of finance has his company as one of the transactional advisors.”