In light of the recent corruption related investigation settlement agreement reached between Airbus and the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) that implicated two (2) NDC Governments, it is more appropriate to conclude that, while corruption under NDC Governments is usually practiced on a complex industrial scale, corruption related practices under NPP Governments on the other hand, are usually undertaken in very simple and petty scale, such as the alleged inflation of sole sourced contract prices at the Ghana Water Co. Ltd (GWCL).
In the recent Airbus corruption related investigation, Dame Victoria Sharp, the President of the Queen’s Bench Division (a division of the UK High Court), approved the settlement struck with the UK Serious Fraud Office.
She stated that: “The seriousness of the criminality in this case hardly needs to be spelled out. As is acknowledged on all sides, it was grave.”
She further noted that, the scale of the wrongdoing demonstrates bribery was “endemic in two core business areas within Airbus.”
Airbus used a network of secret agents to pay large-scale backhanders (bribes), to officials in foreign countries, including Ghana, to land high-value contracts.
This is ‘high tech’ corruption from the corridors of the NDC, as compared to the ‘primitive’ corrupt practices under the NPP!
Alhassan Salifu Bawah
(son of an upright peasant farmer)
