US case against Dr Nduom is a deliberate ‘smear campaign’ by govt elements – PPP

The Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) has said the suit against its founder, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, in the United States over allegations of fraud and money laundering, is part of an elaborate plan to tarnish his image.

The PPP issued the statement in response to a comment by Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Ernest Addison, that the suit is evidence that the central bank’s clean up exercise in the financial sector, which affected GN Bank, one of the businesses founded by Dr Nduom, was not a witch-hunting exercise.

The Governor had said recently that the suit against Dr Nduom and his close relations filed in the US by Birim Group LLC justifies the central bank clampdown on alleged troubled financial institutions.

READ ALSO: Paa Kwesi Nduom, Groupe Nduom, others dragged to US court for alleged financial crimes

However, the PPP disagrees, stating that the suit is part of an elaborate, deliberate and well-orchestrated political smear campaign against Dr Nduom.

“We see the suit as an attempt to divert attention from the negative image that the government has suffered for its high-handedness in the reform agenda. The suit is an attempt by elements in the government, working with their collaborators, to strenuously seek some form of external or third-party vindication for their deliberate collapse of the businesses of the veritable entrepreneur Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom.

“That is why we see the governor's comments as a corollary to the bizarre suit and an unfortunate attempt to give the suit a cloth of legitimacy and currency,” the statement signed by PPP Director of Communications, Felix Mantey, said.

The Brim Group alleges that the Nduom family and the numerous corporations they control took advantage of Ghana’s weak regulatory framework to perpetuate many criminal and racketeering activities.

“Here’s what they did: The Nduom family defendants set up a bank in Ghana, a country with a notoriously weak regulatory environment, collected, aggregated and converted the hard-earned income of local working-class depositors and, in violation of U.S. and Ghana laws, laundered it through sham and undercapitalized companies they controlled, and recycled the laundered funds in the U.S. to acquire ‘legitimate’ assets, including the Illinois Service Federal Bank. Unfortunately, and sadly, defendants’ racketeering crime only unraveled after it had caused untold hardship and much damage to more than a million people, including plaintiff’s assignors, whose savings they stole,” the US-based firm alleged in the writ.

Dr Nduom’s lawyers have said the claims are meritless.