The Committee tasked to investigate the Ameri Power deal, has stated that it visited Dubai to negotiate the terms of Ameri’s contract with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, and not to investigate them for any wrongdoing.
The leader of the Committee, Philip Addison, is thus of the view that, there’s no way the committee’s work could have been influenced as suggested by critics, because the firm only took care of their airfare and hotel bills, and did not give them per diem as alleged.
The Committee has come under criticism after it emerged that its trip to Dubai was funded by the power company.
The Minority in Parliament had argued that the findings of the committee on the deal were not objective, given that it had engaged in what has been described as shady deals [including a fully funded trip to Dubai] with Ameri.
But speaking on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana, Philip Addison, who is Chairman of the Committee, denied these claims, clarifying that the committee traveled to Dubai to only negotiate with Ameri for better terms and not to investigate the firm.
“I keep reading and hearing that they were supposed to investigate Ameri, no, we were not going to investigate Ameri. We were going to have negotiations, not investigation. There was no antagonistic relationship so they freely offered to pick up the bill. So I don’t understand when so much noise is being made about this,” he said.
Asked why government did not foot the bill for the trip , he said “these are people who have expressed the wish to renegotiate the contract. The issue of payment of these tickets had nothing to do with us. I did not go and negotiate for payment of tickets. The way it is being said it is as if I went to Ameri and requested for money to buy tickets. I was sitting in the office and I got the ticket and I got the visa on my phone so I did not go and procure this. It was done under the Ministry of Energy…”
Offering further explanations on the said trip, Mr. Addison said : “I think a lot of noise has been made about this …The delegation that went to Dubai was a government delegation of three. We were suppose to be four but the Chief Executive of VRA who was supposed to be part of it could not attend because of pressing matters. “
“We did not even know the hotel until we got to Dubai and we were sent to the hotel. When we got to Dubai, I understood why they put us in the hotel because it was a walking distance from Ameri’s office,” Mr. Addison added.
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