Late Kofi Annan forced me to open a foreign bank account – Rawlings

Former President of the Republic of Ghana and head of state for a combined period of nineteen (19), Jerry John Rawlings has revealed that but for the intervention of a respected figure Kofi Annan who ‘forced’ him to open a foreign bank account, he had never owned any bank account outside the shores of Ghana.

He was addressing Cadres and National Democratic Congress in Kumasi over the last weekend where he urged the cadres of the party to continue to stand for and by the principles underlying the founding of the NDC.

“My wife and I opened a foreign account at the urging of former United Nations General Secretary, Kofi Annan. He told me he will need me to help in the UN anti-AIDS campaign and once in while the UN will pay me some allowance.” He said.

“My wife and I were in office for nineteen years, by the time we were leaving office, we did not have even one dollar foreign account”, he added.

He further revealed that the foreign bank account was no longer functional following the closure of the program for which it was opened.

“The campaign has ended long ago and that account has been closed. I don’t have any hidden foreign account and she (his wife) does not’’.

Mr Rawlings in a similar event in Accra last year revealed a secret about his house: He said he spent years, building his house bit by bit before it reached where it reached- that it took them more than thirteen (13)years to put up that personal house at Adjiringanno, a plush suburb of Accra. He said at the time he began, the place was a bush without any buildings around.

It is now fully developed.

“When we started putting up that structure, there was no building in that part of town, not the Trassaco Estates” he said.