OSP Airbus report is a pleasant vindication – John Mahama

The OSP at a press briefing on Thursday, August 8 said Mahama was identified as Government Official One by the UK and US courts during their investigations.

“The OSP confirms the identity of the following individuals. The individual described as Government official 1 by the UK court and individual one by the US court is John Dramani Mahama. He is a citizen of Ghana and was the Vice-president of Ghana from 7 January 2009 to 24 July 2012,” the OSP stated.

A breakdown of the Airbus bribery scandal

Ghana bought three Military Airplanes – C295s – from Airbus. The nation received its first C295 in November 2011. The second aircraft was received in April 2012 and the third in November 2015.

The deals covering them were argued at the time to be in line with the 2009-2012 Strategic Plan of the Ghana Armed Forces.

A further €11,750,000 million loan from the Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited was also approved by Parliament during the period for the acquisition of two DA42 MPP Guardian surveillance aircraft for the Ghana Airforce.

Prior to the Parliamentary approval of the loan agreements, Minority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu had slammed the deals as both questionable and non-transparent, adding that the contract sums had been added by the government.

He famously tabled figures obtained from the internet to back his claims but was scorned for doing no more than relying on Google to come up with such serious claims of wrongdoing.

In November 2014, then President John Mahama had announced that Ghana planned to acquire more Military equipment, including five Super Tucanos, Mi-17s and four Z-9s, for the Ghana Airforce.

The recent judgment by England’s Crown Court in Southwark would appear to have now given a new life to earlier suspicions that the agreements covering the C295s were especially corrupt. The January 21, 2020 decision approved a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) between the Serious Fraud Office and Airbus SE, a subsidiary of Airbus, after investigations exposed massive bribery scandals involving the aircraft manufacturer in breach of the Bribery Act 2010.

The court, in its decision on such applications, considers among other things, whether or not the DPA before it is in the public interest.

In the present case, the court found that the DPA is in the public interest and that the terms agreed to meet the tests of fairness, reasonability and proportionality.

The court took the view that pursuing Airbus now would among other things, lead to massive job losses and decimate the company’s performance on the stock market in the immediate to long term.

The judgment stated that SFO investigations found that Airbus — which has since agreed to pay over £3 billion in fines — had engaged in schemes that involved bribing its way to lucrative contracts in countries such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Indonesia and Ghana.

The first agreement to pay bribes in Ghana was to involve some €5 million which was disguised as a Commission to an intermediary – “intermediary 5” – engaged by Airbus to promote its proposal to sell two C295 aircraft to Ghana.

Subsequent approaches by Airbus succeeded, resulting in Ghana buying 3 C259 aircrafts through the multinational’s Spanish defense subsidiaries at separate times.

The deals were arranged through a number of intermediaries led by “intermediary 5”, said to be an unnamed relative of a powerful Ghanaian official who, at the relevant time, was in a decision-making position over the proposed aircraft purchase agreements.

The Spanish company was passed off as the facilitator of the proposed aircraft purchase agreements when in fact it was merely inserted into the arrangements to circumvent due diligence requirements in order to give the questionable transaction a clean bill of health. Upon conclusion of the deal with Ghana, under which two aircraft were initially sold, Airbus or its agents relied on false representations and documentation to pay bribe amounts close to €4 million to the Spanish third party company which in turn funnelled the payments to intermediary 5 .

Under English law, the SFO is entitled to, in due course, prosecute Airbus if it is satisfied that the company failed to comply with the terms of the DPA approved by the Court.

Indeed, ongoing investigations mean that while the SFO might, in the light of Airbus’ cooperation thus far, forgo prosecuting the aircraft manufacturer, it may, after the investigations bring criminal actions against the persons who actually paid or received the bribes complained of.