AFROH hints of going to CHRAJ

THE Alliance for Responsible Office Holders (AFROH) has served notice that it is lodging a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) for thorough investigations into how the Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, allegedly influenced the lifting of the ban imposed on Armajaro Ghana Ltd in the Western Region of Ghana.
This is even after the office of the Vice-President has flatly denied any involvement of Mr Mahama in the Armajaro issue.
Addressing a press conference in Accra, Mr Mahama Haruna, the Chairman of the AFROH, said in its October 31, 2010, edition, the Sunday Times of the United Kingdom revealed that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, acting on the request of the Secretary of International Development, Andrew Mitchell, got the British High Commissioner in Accra to lobby the Castle, the seat of Ghana’s Presidency, to overturn a ban imposed on a British company for breaking the laws of the Republic of Ghana.
It alleged that a few days later, the British High Commissioner, Nicholas Westcott, accompanied Vice-President John Mahama, to dine with Henry Bellingham, a Minister for Africa at the UK Foreign office in London and the Vice-President promised to look into the matter when he returned to Ghana.
Mr Haruna noted that, mysteriously, a few weeks after that, the ban was overturned.
He said more worrying was the fact that the owner of that foreign company was on record as having paid more than $150,000 to the UK Minister, Andrew Mitchell, personally, and to the Conservative Party.
Giving a chronology of events to support their claim, the Chairman of the group said that on July 1, 2010, Mr Anthony Ward, the Chief Executive of Armajaro Holdings, wrote to the UK Cabinet Minister, Andrew Mitchell, the man to whom he had donated $63,000, “to bring weight to bear on the Ghana government.”
He claimed that a letter to that effect read: “We, therefore, would like to ask you to intervene on our behalf at the Presidential level [in Ghana] to request that the ban be lifted with immediate effect.”
He said the timing of the letter was such that it would prompt the British Government to lobby the Vice-President in person and the letter suggested that “one potential lobbying opportunity would be a UK-Ghana investment forum in London, which the Ghanaian Vice-President, Mr Mahama, was due to attend.”
Mr Haruna said Mr Henry Bellingham, the Foreign Office Minister, in fact, dined with Mr Mahama and Ambassador Westcott, and the matter on discussion was importantly Armajaro and that a leaked UK Foreign Office memo reporting on the meeting said: “The Vice-President (John Mahama) has undertaken to look into it immediately on his return.”
He added that the Sunday Times reported that “The campaign paid dividend. On July 12, Westcott reported in an internal memo that the Ghanaian Vice-President was going to look into the ban immediately.”
Mr Haruna said if Mr Mahama’s meeting played no role in the subsequent lifting of the ban, then the sequence of events suggest otherwise but added that Mr Westcott sent an e-mail to Mitchell’s DFID in August, knowing the Minister’s interest in the matter, disclosing that “a draft decision made by the Cocoa Board lifting the ban” had been drawn and “I hope this will sort the matter.”
He added that on September 8, 2010, the trade ban on Armajaro in Ghana was lifted in all but one district.
Mr Haruna said on September 28, 2010, the Chief Executive Officer of COCOBOD, Mr Anthony Fofie, with the Finance Minister next to him, told journalists at a news conference to announce a new producer price for cocoa that “the ban imposed on three licensed buying companies from operating in some parts of the country is still in force.”
He noted that according to official documents, by September 8, the ban on Armajaro, at least had been lifted, and this was 20 days before the Chief Executive of COCOBOD announced to the whole country that the ban was still in place.