'NPP Secret Accounts': Kwabena Agyepong accuses Akufo-Addo of sidelining Afoko
The General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, has broken his silence on allegations of diversion of party funds into a secret account and accused the flag bearer of sidelining him and the party Chairman, Mr Paul Afoko in his dealings.
According to Mr Agyepong, besides the moves to sideline them, there was an orchestrated effort to deliberately project the general secretary as someone who was bent on sabotaging the campaign of the flag bearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
In an interview on Accra-based radio station, Okay FM on Monday, Mr Agyepong said he had tried to restrain himself from going public with the matters since he reckoned it bordered on internal party issues.
But since the First Vice Chair, Mr Freddy Blay and the Treasurer, Mr Abankwa Yeboah chose to go to the “court of public opinion” with the issues and painted him [Agyepong] and the chairman [Afoko] as “bad people” who have decided to exclude the treasurer
Background
The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service is investigating the First Vice-Chair of the NPP, Mr Freddie Blay, and the Treasurer, Mr Abankwa Yeboah over an alleged diversion of party funds into an account at Ecobank.
According to the police, the two had expended party funds without resorting to laid down procedure. This followed a complaint lodged with the police by one Baah Achamfour, an NPP member.
There have been suggestions that the chairman and general secretary were the ones behind the complainant [Baah Achamfour] in sending the matter to the police.
Responding to the issues in the radio interview, Mr Agyepong said he was a fearless person and that if something untoward happens in the party, he would not need to hide behind somebody to fight.
Listen to Mr Agyepong's interview in the audio attached below
{mp3}kwabena_agyepong_akufo_addo_sideline{/mp3}
Akufo Addo sidelining Afoko
According to Mr Agyepong, over the last one month, he had been making conscious efforts to try to synchronise his programmes and that of the flag bearer so as to be present wherever the flag bearer would be but there have been machinations to sideline him.
He mentioned the flag bearer’s visit to Kwame Nkrumah Circle after the June 3 flood and fire disaster, his visit to James Town recently and to Akropong on the death of the Omanhene, Oseadeeyo Nana Addo Dankwa I as examples.
He also mentioned the last press conference of the party which talked about the electoral register at the Alisa Hotel in Accra and said the chairman [Paul Afoko] was not informed until the morning of the press conference.
“I had to prevail on him to come and sit in it. When he sat in it, he was seeing the presentation for the first time and me, as general secretary, saw the presentation 10 minutes before I went to the Electoral Commission with Dr Bawumia. Why are we being treated this way when we are trying our best to support the party?
Ecobank account
Touching on the said Ecobank account which was a subject under investigations, Mr Agyepong said there was everything wrong with the decision of the treasurer and the first vice chair to reactivate an account of the party at Ecobank without the knowledge of the party chairman and general secretary.
It was the treasurer who first confessed on August 10, 2015 at a special meeting of the finance committee that the said account had been reactivated, he said.
The matter was referred to the National Executive Committee on August 18 and the Volta Regional Chairman, Mr Peter Amewu, even commented that it bordered on criminality and that if it were to be any corporate organisation, the treasurer would have been sacked. A subcommittee was then formed to go into the matter.
According to Mr Agyepong, he travelled to the United States and in his absence, he got information on August 27 that someone [Baah Achamfour] had complained to the police and the police had written to him for a response.
He said the next thing he heard was Mr Blay and Mr Abankwa Yeboah choosing to go to the court of public opinion and accusing the chairman and general secretary of squandering party funds as their justification to reactivate the said account.
How can we do that when the treasurer had all the party cheque books in his possession, Mr Agyepong questioned and said the allegation that the treasurer had been excluded as a signatory to the account of the party was not true since by convention of the party, it was for the three, chairman, general secretary and treasurer who has always been signatories, Mr Agyepong said.
It is also not true he said, that the chairman or the general secretary has refused to sign any mandate card presented to them to reactivate the Ecobank account because Mr Blay had been added as an account signatory.
“The first time I saw the mandate card was when I went to Ecobank on August 11. The bank refused to show me the file, explaining I was not a signatory to the account,” Mr Agyepong claimed.
With the bank agreeing to reactivate the account with the name NPP 2010 account, and accepting bankers draft with the name on it as NPP headquarters means, “something untoward has happened and we are all worried about it. All we are doing is to try and protect the finances of the party and send it to where it is required.”
Mr Agyepong said it was not true that only monies meant for the Talensi by-election has been taken out of that account.
“I have seen a copy of that account and there has been two tranches of Gh¢300,000 amounting to Gh¢600,000 taken out by the Treasurer in his name. And then another Gh¢430,000 also taken out, and another Gh¢81,000 taken out by the Nasara Coordinator. The question is who authorised these payments because I have not authorised any disbursements; the chairman has also not authorised anything. You as the treasurer does not have authority to take out money without authorisation.”
Over a million has been taken out of that account and that has not been explained to anybody and then with the Talensi by-election, the budget was not a million. The explanation that the money was there in the account is not true as explained by the two. Also the decision to invest in treasury bills, the Treasurer alone cannot decide on that.
For the bases of accountability, me as General Secretary has to make it public because they were first to go public”, Mr Agyepong said.
Freddie Blay responds
Mr Freddie Blay in a three page letter, written by his lawyers in response to the issues, stated that the said Ecobank account had been in existence for 12 years now, contrary to Baah Achamfour’s claims.
He explained that Messrs Afoko and Agyepong “refused to sign the Ecobank mandate card when they realised that our client was a signatory to that account. They insisted on being signatories to the exclusion of our client”.
Contrary to practice and constitutional provisions, “the Chairman and General Secretary issued instructions to some banks to the effect that they were to be the sole signatories to some accounts. Our client was not, and is still not, aggrieved by the decision of the Chairman and General-Secretary to exclude him from being a signatory to some of the accounts”.
This was in spite of the fact that by practice, “the signatories to most NPP accounts had always been four persons – the Chairman, 1st Vice-Chairman, General-Secretary and Treasurer,” the letter, addressed to a sub-committee investigating the allegations, observed.
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