One of the advantages in the UK is that to a large degree there are paper trails to every banking transaction. With a simple audit trail of inquiry, we can trace when and where the money left and where it went to. I was very impressed with the detailed description of the account of the events of a scam by the Rawlingses to defraud the Royal Bank of Scotland .
THE EVENT
The NDC government is massively corrupt. There was one gratuitous example which especially annoyed the British High Commissioner at the time, Craig Murray. A company called International Genrice, registered in Southampton, had got loans totalling over £3o million from the Royal Bank of Scotland to construct two hotels, La Palm and Coco Palm. One was on the beach next to the Labadi Beach hotel, the other on Fourth Circular Road in Cantonments, on the site of the former Star Hotel.
The loan repayments were guaranteed by the Ex-port Credit Guarantee Department, and at the time a British government (Labour) agency designed to insure UK exporters against loss. In effect the British taxpayer was underwriting the export, and if the loan defaulted the British tax payer would pay.
In fact this is what happened, and the file crossed the desk of the Deputy British High Commissioner because the British people were now paying out on defaulted payments to the Royal Bank of Scotland. So he went to look at the two hotels.
He found La Palm Hotel was some cleared land, some concrete foundations, and one eight room chalet without a roof. Coco Palm Hotel didn’t exist at all. In a corner of the plot, four houses had been built by International Generics. As the housing market was very strong, these had been pre-sold, so none of the loan had gone in to them.
The Deputy High Commissioner, Craig Murray was astonished!!!
The papers clearly showed that £31.5 million had fully been disbursed by the Royal Bank of Scotland, against progress and completion certificates on the construction. But in truth there was virtually no construction.
How could this have happened?
The Chief Executive of International Generics was an Israeli named Leon Tamman. He was a close friend to, and a front for Mrs Rawlings.
The Royal Bank of Scotland had plainly failed in due diligence, having paid out on completion of two buildings, one not started and one only just started. But the Royal Bank of Scotland really couldn’t give a toss, because the repayments and interest were guaranteed by the British tax payer. In deed the Deputy British High Commissioner (Craig Murray) seemed to be the only one who did care.
The Rawlingses had put some of their share of this looted money towards payments on their beautiful home in Dublin, one of the most expensive houses in Ireland. The Deputy High Commissioner wrote reports on all of this back to London, and specifically urged the Serious Fraud Office to prosecute Tamman and the Rawlingses.
He received a reply that there was no “appetite†in London for this. Eventually La Palm did get built, but with over £60 million of new money taken this time from SSNIT, the Ghanaian tax payers’ social security and pension fund. Coco Palm never did get built, but Tamman continued to develop it as a housing estate, using another company vehicle. Tamman has since died. The loans were definitively written off by the British government, Gordon Brown. That is but one example of a single scam, but it gives an insight in to the way the Rawlingses looted the country, with the active support of current President John Atta Mills. Perhaps the current President and T.B. Joshua disciple, Atta Mills can tell Ghanaians what he did with his share of the money.
Stay tuned as i seek more information on how and why current NDC leader Atta Mills recently deposited 3 million dollars in Swiss bank accounts………..
The Author: Solomon Adjei-Gyamfi
