Kwabena Donkor shifts blame in $170m judgement debt on A-G’s Department under Akufo-Addo govt

Former Power Minister, Dr Kwabena Donkor, has blamed the award of a $170 million judgement debt against the state by a London court on the Attorney-General’s Department under the current administration.

Dr Donkor wants the current Attorney-General, Godfred Yeboah Dame, to appreciate the fact that the judgement debt awarded to Ghana Power Generation Company (GPGC) was because the current government wrongfully terminated the agreement signed under the previous government and not because terms of the agreement were bad.

“The award was given for wrongful termination, not for wrongful signing. I am therefore surprised that the Attorney-General does not deem it fit to confirm that whoever terminated will also be referred to the CID.

“The Ghana Power Generation Company (GPGC) was sent to Cabinet, it had cabinet approval. Indeed, the Secretary to Cabinet wrote to Parliament on the 3rd of July 2015, and parliament approved the agreement.’

“It went through the constitutional process set out for these agreements,” he told 3News.

Dr Kwabena Donkor, who is currently the Member of Parliament for Pru East, was reacting to a claim by the Attorney-General that the decision by the signatories (officials under the previous administration) to sign such an agreement was uninformed.

“Indeed, the cost was very, very monumental. As per the report of the PPA Committee, if all the agreements signed by John Jinapor and his former boss had been allowed to run, each year, the nation was going to be exposed to payment to the sum of $586 million. Cumulatively, between 2013 and 2018 the nation was going to pay as much as $1.76 billion,” he told Joy News on Wednesday.

However, in response, Dr Donkor told 3 News that the agreement “had the lowest tariffs of all the emergency power purchasing agreements. It had the shortest duration, four years, and that agreement did not require any financial security from the state of Ghana and therefore it was one of the agreements negotiated.”

Ghana has been ordered by a Commercial Court in London to pay a whopping $170 million in damages to GPGC.

The order comes after the court rejected a late appeal by the government of Ghana to set aside a $134million judgement debt awarded in favour of the power contractor, GCGP.