Agyapa Deal Very Legitimate- Gabby Otchere Darko

A leading member of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Gabby Otchere Asare Darko has stated that the Agyapa Royalties Deal was a legitimate move by the government and devoid of corruption contrary to the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s report.

His reaction comes more than a month after a ruling by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice.

“Agyapa, a very legitimate, even if controversial, move by govt to expand the use of its gold revenues, had no corruption about it. Zero! You may not like it but to say, as they did, that a group of related persons were stealing Ghana’s gold was really sad and low,” he said in a Tweet.

“We the lawyers who worked on it were excited about the innovativeness of the whole MIIF institution which Parliament created and the things it was set up to do, including Agyapa. We were never motivated by even our fees. How floating on the London Stock Exchange 49% of an entity 100% owned by Ghana could be described as stealing is indeed sad and baffling,” he added.

Background
The Agyapa Royalties Deal is a deal to mortgage the country’s future gold royalties for a “lump sum of money”, the Ministry of Finance explains.

75.6% of the country’s royalties from 12 gold-producing mines and four mines under development under the current mining leases will go into the deal.

This met sharp criticism from a section of Ghanaians three years ago.

In November 2020 the President of Ghana called for a review of the transaction documents for parliamentary approval after the Special Prosecutor released a corruption risk report on the deal stating it is susceptible to corruption specifically illicit financial flows and money laundering.

In response to this, the Ghana Integrity Initiative (Transparency International Ghana), the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition and Transparency International filed a suit with the ECOWAS court in December 2020 to stop the government from carrying on with the deal.

They argued that the deal violates Article 21 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which states that all peoples are entitled to determine how their wealth and natural resources are disposed of.

But in court, Ghana’s Attorney-General, Godfred Yeboah Dame argued otherwise.

The Court sitting in Abuja in Nigeria on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, threw out the trio’s petition to stop the government from monetizing the country’s royalties.

The Judges disagreed with civil society organizations on matters related to corruption and the breach of checks and balances, arguing that the co-applicants failed to present sufficient proof.