WikiLeaks cables: UK's anti-drugs fight in Ghana 'beset by corruption'

US diplomats claim corruption in Ghana has ruined costly UK-funded anti-drugs
smuggling operation.............

A British operation to stem the flow of cocaine through Ghana has been beset by
corruption, with local drug police sabotaging expensive scanning equipment and
tipping off smugglers to avoid detection, leaked US embassy cables reveal.

Ghana's president, John Atta Mills, even worried that his own entourage may be
smuggling drugs through his presidential lounge at Accra's Kotoka airport,
and asked a senior UK customs official in November 2009 for help to screen
them "in the privacy of his suite to avoid any surprises if they are caught
carrying drugs", according to the US embassy in Accra.
The request reveals a deep crisis in the bilateral operation against wholesale
drug trafficking into the UK through an airport which has become one of the
main transit hubs for South American drug cartels after the authorities
successfully blocked routes from the Caribbean.

Operation Westbridge has so far cost the taxpayer more than £1m and more than
£100m worth of drugs has been seized amid growing UK concern that drug
trafficking is becoming institutionalised in west Africa. The UN has estimated
that up to 60 tonnes of cocaine, worth £1.3bn, are being smuggled through west
Africa, mostly into Europe, each year.

According to the cables, Ghanaian narcotics control board (Nacob) officers
working with British officials:
• Actively helped traffickers, even calling the criminals on their mobile
phones to tell them when to travel to avoid detection.
• Sabotaged sensitive drug scanners provided to the Ghanaian government.
• Channelled passengers including pastors and bank managers and their wives,
into the security-exempt VVIP lounge despite suspicions they were trafficking
drugs.

Smuggling has become so blatant that on one flight last year, two traffickers
vomited drugs they had swallowed and subsequently died, while parcels of
cocaine were found taped under the seats of a KLM plane even before boarding.

Roland O'Hagan, the British head of Operation Westbridge, reportedly told the
US embassy: "President Mills had expressed interest in acquiring itemisers
[portable screening devices] for the presidential suite at the airport in order
to screen his entourage for drugs before boarding any departing flight."
Mills had publicly pledged to crack down on wholesale drug trafficking into the
UK via the airport and won the presidency on an anti-drugs platform. But, in
June 2009, he told the US ambassador to Ghana, Donald Teitelbaum, "elements of
his government are already compromised and that officials at the airport
tipped off drug traffickers about operations there".
Embassy contacts in the police service and the president's office "have said
they know the identities of the major barons," but "the government of Ghana
does not have the political will to go after [them]", a December 2007 cable
said.

A UK official overseeing Westbridge had observed Nacob agents at the airport
directing passengers away from flights receiving extra scrutiny, a cable from
the US embassy in Accra revealed in August 2008. "On one occasion, [the
official] returned unexpectedly to the airport at 4am to screen a flight. An
arrested trafficker told the UK official that the trafficker had been told that
Westbridge was not operating that night. A test by Westbridge officials of the
mobile phone sim card of a trafficker found the phone numbers of senior Nacob
officials."
He said two itemisers were incapacitated by sabotage, remarking that "the
knowledge required to remove the filters exceeded the basic knowledge of the
operators".

The cable concluded: "The government of Ghana does not provide the resources
necessary to address the problem and, at times, does not appear to have the
political will to go after the major drug barons."

Operation Westbridge began in November 2006, overseen by the Home Office and
Foreign Office, and the government has trumpeted its success. Last year, the
Home Office minister responsible for tackling drug trafficking, Alan Campbell,
told a parliamentary inquiry that the scheme was a "very good example" of how
to tackle the cocaine trade, while in a written statement, the Home Office said
"these operations meet our drugs strategy commitment to intercept drugs and
drugs couriers before they reach the UK".

In the confidential cables, a different picture emerges. Kim Howells, Labour
foreign office minister, delivered a "stern message" to the Ghanaian government
in October 2007 about its lack of co-operation and responded "testily" to a
request from Ghana's interior minister for more scanning equipment, saying "if
a 'criminal' is operating equipment, it is worthless," according to the US
embassy in Accra.
Three months later, the embassy reported that "seizures in Accra drop to almost
zero when the Westbridge team …is back in London".

In November 2009, O'Hagan told the US embassy that Nacob believes the airport's
VVIP lounge has been a conduit for drugs leaving the country. Bank managers,
pastors, and their wives were among those given official passports and access
to the lounge which circumvents security checks, the embassy reported.
"Nacob placed two officers in the lounge to screen departing passengers, and
the number of passengers using the VVIP lounge has decreased," the embassy
reported O'Hagan saying late last year.


Source:* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

FPACC’s Reaction on SFO’s Actions at GFA

Ghana is a country of laws and the laws of the land must prevail. For a young democracy like ours to grow and be sustainable, the laws of the land must be supreme, with equality before the law. These are the basic tenets, justice and peace, the offspring of good governance.

Ghana is gradually gaining notoriety for lawlessness and outright disregard for the laws of the land. It is becoming a society where some have become untouchables and see themselves far above the law, while the few downtrodden are surely and unjustly punished by the same law. A goat thief, for instance, may be given ten years of jail term while a Minister of State or someone with strong “connections” may bolt away with millions of the taxpayer’s money in broad daylight with no one daring to question him/her.

The best strategy now is to look everything through the lenses of POLITICS. “When you find yourself in political office you can scheme the system as much as you can. Surely your government will not prosecute you, so you are safe as long as your government remains in power. If the unfortunate happens and your party's rigging could not offset the popular vote and you happen to see yourself in opposition, don’t worry if the new government wants to prosecute you, just call it political witch-hunting (persecution) and the poor foot soldiers of your PARTY will run to your rescue. So either way, you are safe.” This is the order of the day.

For once, our security forces have gotten it RIGHT. What EOCO did is highly commendable and every well-meaning Ghanaian must commend them. In as much as we want GFA to be independent, free of government influences, they are not above the laws of Ghana. How dare they think they are untouchable and hence can do whatever they wish with any money that comes into the coffers of the Association without accounting to the taxpayers, whether it is from Government or from corporate donors?
Why don’t they go to EOCO to answer any questions if they have nothing to hide?

The Security agencies have done well by following the due process of law, obtaining a court order, before storming the premises. This is what happens in advance democracies everywhere in the world. FBI can storm the premises of Major League Soccer (MLS) to take anything they want but of course only with a court order, so can the Scotland Yard storm The FA premises, but again only with a court order.

The GFA officials must know that even your own business you are running, some arm of the Government have oversight of it and if the Government feels something untoward is happening, they can take action but again only with the permission of the courts of the land.

Anagblah, Nyantakyi, Randy Abbey and his group must march to EOCO to answer questions and if there is nothing they are hiding there is nothing to fear.

EOCO, congratulations for the great job! Keep up the good work. Your actions are putting Ghana on the way to not only sustainable democracy but advanced democracy, where the law rules and nobody is above the law, including the GFA. This is what we need to Africa, RULE OF LAW~

Desire L. Ankah, CFE
Executive Director,
FPACC

After Farmer’s day, What Next?

FPACC wish to commend the Governments (past and present) of Ghana for not only instituting and maintaining a day for commemorating the relentless patriots of this land, our august Farmers but also for their relentless efforts to empower these farmers.
Ghana is an agro- based economy with more than 55% of the populace engaged in farming activities in one way or the other. Unfortunately it is this 55% that are the most poorest of this country.
Governments before in one way or the other have done their “best’’ to enhance the activities of these farmers; be it “Operation Feed Yourself” (OFY) of the 1970s, the preaching of “Grow what you Eat and Eat what you Grow” and “Eat what you Grow and Can what you can’t” slogans of the 1980s, are but some of the few initiatives by past governments geared towards improving the agric sector and increasing our food production to enhance sustainable development.
Some former leaders of this land, in desperation, went as far as carrying Cocoa sacks on their heads together with the farmers to the nearest depots for onward transportation to the ports. Others undertook Presidential Special Initiatives (PSIs)/Youth in Farming. These emphases the seriousness of this menace and although past governments have done a lot in one way or the other to alleviate this problem, the fact remains that we still have a long way to go and lot more need to be done to better the lot of these noblemen and for that matter the country.
In as much as we commend President Mills for making Agriculture Development the bedrock of his administration’s Better Ghana Agenda, there is still much to be done.
FPACC is therefore making the following suggestions which we urge the Government to take serious if they are to make a significant impact on the lives of our honorable farmers:
1) Legislations/Laws to be enacted by parliament to curb corruption in the agric sector with stringent punitive measures against smuggling of our farm produce (including Cocoa) across our borders.
2) Government must make it a priority to construct feeder roads to the hinterlands, which are accessible all year, for the conveyance of farm produce to the urban centers.
3) Government must make available small scale business loan facilities (with low interest for famers) with the NECESSARY MEASURES in place to forestall these facilities being misuse and that only those it is intended for are the ones to have it.
4) Establish agro-base factories for processing and preservation/storage of what is left of these produce during the bumper harvest, for the lean season and/or for export to generate the much needed foreign exchange
5) Encourage farmers to form cooperatives. This will not only economically empower the individuals and the communities involve through the development of sustainable businesses but it will enhance their ability to access available credit facilities more easily, whether from the government or private.
6) The Ministry of Agric must, as a matter of urgency, make contacts with National Cooperative Business Association’s (NCBA) Cooperative League of the United States of America International (CLUSA) for assistance. For more than 50 years, NCBA's CLUSA International Program has worked in developing countries to economically empower individuals and communities through the development of sustainable cooperative businesses and other community-based organizations focused on agriculture and agribusiness development, forestry and natural resource management, improving community health and promoting democracy and governance.
With these and many more ideas and initiatives that government is already taking, we are sure to empower our farmers. Empowering our famers would also help reduce rural urban drift and its associated crimes.
The powers that be, over to you!
Desire L. Ankah, Executive Director, FPACC http://www.fpacc.org; http://www.fpacc.blogspot.com