To Ghana's Most Incisive Pro-Regime Journalist: From An Irreverent Anti-Regime Colleague And Friend!

My dear brother,

My goodness - you really are a quick study! Your Joy FM news-file programme contributions today were a tad more au fait with the world of business, than many of your past contributions, on such issues. Bravo - well done, you!

Unfortunately, my brother, you seem to forget that politicians jailing others for causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state, no matter how driven they may be by unfathomable greed, are unlikely to do things that are flagrantly contrary to the Public Procurement Act.

So, in a very real sense, you miss the point in crediting them with good intentions, in this GT palaver: when you point to the fact that they are following all the public procurement rules - as evidence of their good intentions and proof that they are only acting in the national interest, in this matter.

The same smoke and mirrors takeover tactics, driven by the same principle of the 500,000 GBP payment request that the Anglogold board rejected for payment at their meeting in London, in the wake of the battle for Ashanti Goldfields that I told you about, is at work in this deal too, my brother: and in the end any kickbacks in this deal, will become public, in similar fashion, too: as sure as day follows night!

A wise fellow like you surely knows that the road to neo-conservative hell for ordinary Ghanaians and their homeland Ghana, is paved with very good intentions: those intentions being the private wealth creation of our public figures - now done in the most elegant and financially creative of ways possible, on the planet Earth?

Surely, you don't think that very clever politicians under whose tenure, high profile political opponents have been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, after due process, for wilfully causing financial loss to the Ghanaian nation-state, are ever likely to lay themselves open to similar treatment: were they to lose power in December 2008 - by letting mere mortals like us, see through their chicanery, in such deals, do you?


And have you forgotten that the Norwegian cement giant, Scancem, had a huge slush fund from which payments were made to some African leaders to buy them off and encourage them to sell vastly undervalued near-monopoly state-owned cement entities?

That "well-paid-at-public-expense" spin-doctor fellow, Mr. Kwarteng, talks glibly about their forays unto the piranha-infested waters of the international capital markets (hmm, and innocents abroad like that, too - super-clever fellows, who once tried to source zillions of dollars for Ghana's development, from a Chinese hairdressing salon, in the seedy backstreets of London!). Ah, ajah nyame - enti Kwame Nkrumah Ghana awiaye paa enia? Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!Is it not annoying that having got the benefits of debt relief, although neither he nor the rest of his crowd of greed-consumed political nerds, ever had the nous or the gumption to advocate for debt relief whiles they were in the political wilderness, they are now busy piling up yet more debt, for dubious reasons?

Whiles some of us waged what they probably derisively must have thought was a Quixotic fight throughout the 1990's, to have Africa's debt owed them, written off by the Western nations as well as the World Bank and the IMF, where were they, I ask?

Yet, today, they have the gall to pile up yet more of the very debt that got our country into such a financial mess in the first place, and was squeezing the very lifeblood out of our country - in the interminable interest payments we used to have to make in the days before debt-relief.

And as we speak the greedy crooks amongst them are also busy grabbing kickbacks in the process: from their share of the fat fees that their crony-capitalist pals in Ghana's financial services industry, are now generating from all that frenzied overseas capital markets activity, which "smooth" Mr. Kwarteng talks so proudly about. What perfidy!

The question you must get them to answer - and I do hope you will share their answer to you, with me, as a friend and fellow patriot -  is: just what plans for meeting its interest payments, did GT have in place, when it's UK advisers, Iroko, talked them into the corporate bond idea?

Hmmm, and it will interest you to know that even Iroko too, is another erstwhile African financial basket case: which was spun off by its former Botswanan parent, because it was hemorrhaging cash badly - and threatening its parent group's financial stability!

And incidentally, you must also ask the masters of the universe in charge of our country today, just who in Ghana introduced that "too-clever-by-half " Iroko, to GT: and how much in fees they got for the US$ 200 millions GT corporate bond they issued in London on the beleaguered state-owned telecom company GT's behalf!

You must also ask them, precisely what plans the minister of finance also had, for our country to meet the interest payments on that irresponsible US$ 750 millions sovereign bond issue: and the amount of fees its sundry financial advisers pocketed from the hapless taxpayers' of mother Ghana, in that clever rip off too (the US$750 sovereign bond issue, i.e.).

And if Ghanaian taxpayers are paying for it, why should details about those particular interest payments and what plans were made for them, prior to us taking that disastrous step, be treated by those whom we elected to rule our nation (and who constantly boast about the "NEPAD" transparency and good governance they are practising!), as a state secret?

And perhaps you can also ask the greedy hypocrites amongst those who now rule us, the size of all the foreign currency kickbacks they have made thus far, from their new-found avenue for personal wealth creation by stealth - designed to build up their already stratospherically high personal net worth - their share in the massive fees their cronies in the Ghanaian financial services sector are getting for giving such incredibly bad and self-serving advice, to our elected leaders!

And finally, my dear friend and fellow patriot, as I told you, any savvy Vodafone shareholder with a modicum of financial shrewdness, would tell you that the recent buy-back by the management of Vodafone of a billion pounds worth of its own shares on the London stock exchange (the LSE), was a backward step - and not anything for anyone here to boast about!

Irate Vodafone shareholders in the UK, will tell you that in their view that amount of "dosh", would have been far better spent, paying dividends to its shareholders!

And if your sources haven't told you so yet, 3,500 top-up card resellers in the UK, out of a total of 70,000 disgruntled businesses, are temporarily boycotting Vodafone: which unilaterally cut their commissions without consulting them - a move that has led to loss of income for all those resellers, my dear friend!

Perhaps its a harbinger of things to come, in a GT under their stewardship? Hmm, Ghana - ayeasem oo!

The best way forward for GT, in my view, is to recruit someone of Herbert Mensah or Alhaji Asuma Banda's calibre to be its MD, pay him or her a world class compensation package of several million dollars per annum, and give the workers a 10% stake in the company: to motivate them - with dividend payments paid into a special fund that is paid out periodically to them, as bonus, when they increase their productivity and help GT generate stellar profit margins!

And instead of selling it, the clueless management and board of GT ought to be summarily dismissed for getting the company into such a pickle, when they allowed super-greedy Ghanaian financial services Titans, driven by the allure of easy fees, to talk them into the corporate bond idea: without them first working out a precise plan of just how they were going to meet the interest payments on those corporate bonds.

Why should our country lose such a strategic asset, simply because of the ineptitude of the "square- pegs-in-round-holes" whom your friends in power appointed into office to run GT and to supervise it as board members?

In any case, as I have told you, I simply don't care what this regime of well-educated morons does any more.

When ordinary people finally bring the 4th Republic crashing down, to be replaced by a new 5th Republic, we shall simply go over all the deals this "regime-of-many-crooks" has done.m

 And we shall take back every single sold-off and previously state-owned asset, which has the slightest whiff of corruption about it - and severely punish anyone who engaged in sharp practice and illegality, in any of those deals. Period.

My brother, I am pretty sanguine about Ghana's future. In the end, selfless, decent and honest people, will replace our myopic and self-serving political elite - and use our oil and natural gas revenues to transform our nation into Africa's equivalent of Scandinavia's egalitarian societies.

No bloody fears, old chap. Do stay blessed, my brother!

Best wishes,

Kofi.