According to insiders, the Ghanaian Ambassador to Belgium, , had allegedly blown some €1.8 million to renovate an Embassy property which is valued at €2 million. Also, she has reportedly spend in excess of €700,000 to renovate the Ambassador’s residence.
A more sizzling twist to the saga is that one Edwin Boateng, a nephew to President Akufo Addo, may be on the radar of intelligence network for a supposed inexplicable movement of funds.
Our sources say Mr. Boateng has a particularly interesting relationship with the Ambassador. Incidentally, the Ambassador is reportedly close to another powerful individual close to the President at the Presidency.
Details of this scandal are still sketchy and riddled with serious speculations.
The saga at the Ghanaians Mission in Belgium reveals that the ING Bank suddenly pulled the plugs on the embassy and gave no reasons to the embarrassed diplomatic installation in Brussels.
The bank simply referred to Article 59 of General Regulations, which allows it to terminate business relationships with some of its clients without any recourse to any explanation.
Effectively, the Ghanaian Embassy was given until November 12, 2020, to withdraw all their funds from the four accounts that the mission operates at the bank.
“At the embassy, we received a letter out of the blue from our bankers in August that they had decided to trigger an article. When you open an account with the bank you sign that agreement. That article states that both parties can abrogate the agreement without any justification or explanation. They asked us to remove our money and put it in another bank. That’s how they put it,” Ghana’s Ambassador to Belgium, Sena Siaw Boateng, told reporters.
The situation leaves many unanswered questions as Whatsup News is gathering that following the Blacklisting of Ghana as a money-laundering hun by the European Union, international intelligence networks are closing in on suspicious movement of funds by appointees in the Akufo Addo administration.
The ING Bank is reputed for its high integrity internationally and would not want to associate with dirty money, even if it required stepping on diplomatic toes.
The Belgian situation is reportedly one of many more such blacklisting set to hit Ghana in Europe and other countries.
Already, the government is exposed by a number of official deals that had been routed through notorious money-laundering hubs. For instance, the controversial Agyapa Royalty deal spearheaded by the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta is domiciled in Jersey, the world’s third-aggressive money-laundering hub.
The second such questionable deal is the COVID-19 testing at the Kotota International Airport (KIA) by Frontier Health Services Limited, a company linked to several shell companies associated Panama and Dominica in the interest of fugitive Nigerian Billionaire, Dominic Peters.
Dominic Peters has been linked to high-level international briberies and crude oil theft under the auspices of the disgraced former Nigerian Oil Minister Diezani K. Alison-Madueke
