Alhaji Ibrahim Adam
Ghanaian politician and animal scientist, Alhaji Ibrahim Adam has disclosed that the reasons for incarceration in 2003 by then John Agyekum Kufuor’s administration were ridiculous.
Speaking on the issue nineteen years on in an interview with Motion TV monitored by MyNewsGh.com, he disclosed that it had no criminal connotations but a purely political witch-hunt.
“What did they hold against me? They said I gave the lady who promoted the project, and I recommended her for a multiple entry visa.
"What is a visa? A director could even recommend anybody for a visa but I did so because that was the standard practice for potential investors and every minister was doing it and no big deal at all. The second one they said I attended her wedding in Atlanta…ridiculous. Fine! I did and I don’t doubt it.
"When she first came to Ghana, I was the Minister of Agriculture. That was around 1993 and I advised her to open an account at ADB. I told her to demonstrate the superiority of her technology to ours by taking a cedi facility from the Agriculture Development Bank.
"I was rather pushing for her to take a cedi facility and not a foreign exchange so how can you send me to jail because of foreign exchange? That was purely political trial”, he revealed.
It would be recalled that Mrs. Renee Woodard Cotton, the African-American woman behind the $21 million Quality Grains scandal became a subject of investigations upon assumption of office of the erstwhile Kufuor government in 2001.
The then Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation also cited Alhaji Ibrahim Adam, a former Minister for Agriculture for introducing Ms. Renee Woodard, Chief Executive of the Company to the Finance Ministry and also using his office to acquire land at Aveyime for the cultivation of the rice farm.
Subsequently, some officials were dragged before Fast Track High Court in Accra including three officials: Ibrahim Adam, former minister of Food and Agriculture, Kwame Peprah, former Finance minister and Dr. George Sipa Yankey, former director of the legal sector, Private and Financial Institutions division of the Ministry of Finance and accused of causing financial loss to the state for giving over $21 million sovereign government guarantee loan.
On 29th April, 2003 an Accra Fast Track High Court presided over by Justice Dixon Kwame Afreh sentenced three former top public officials to various terms of imprisonment for their involvement in the Quality Grain Company case.
Kwame Peprah, Former Minister of Finance was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment while Ibrahim Adam, Former Minister of Food and Agriculture and George Yankey, a Former Director of Legal Sector, Private and Financial Institutions of the Ministry of Finance were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment each.
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