Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, the United Arab Emirates-based agent in Ghana’s botched attempt to procure Sputnik V vaccines, has agreed to refund the sum of US$2.47 million to the Government of Ghana, being the “remaining amount for the non-supplied doses” of the vaccines.
Sheikh Al Maktoum was due to supply about 300,000 Sputnik V vaccines in an agreement signed with the government, but his outfit delivered only 20,000.
The parliamentary ad-hoc committee set up to investigate the controversial Sputnik V vaccine deal has ordered the Finance Minister to retrieve the money.
In a letter addressed to the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Sheikh Al Maktoum said that “we shall initiate the refund process to your bank account”.
Below is the letter:
“We’ll retrieve the cash”
The Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, has promised to recover the $2.4 million (GHC16,331,640) given to Sheikh Al Maktoum.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Asaase Radio‘s Beatrice Adu for The Big Bulletin, Ofori-Atta acknowledged it was his responsibility to retrieve monies used towards procuring the Sputnik V vaccines and guaranteed that his ministry will do so.
“We will always get our money back … I think it’s just so little empathy in appreciating what my colleague minister might have been going through when you have been sworn in with a mandate to protect the health of people …” Ofori-Atta said.
“I’m not sure he had [any] other choice with the way he acted,” Ofori-Atta said, adding: “Would we get our money back? And we would. It would be my responsibility to get the money back and I would.”
Pressure to resign
Meanwhile, the pressure group OccupyGhana has called for the resignation or dismissal of Agyeman-Manu over the botched Sputnik V vaccine procurement contract.
Reacting to the recommendations by the Alexander Afenyo-Markin-led ad-hoc parliamentary committee set up to investigate the controversial Sputnik V vaccine deal, OccupyGhana said it does not believe the crisis situation brought about by the outbreak of disease was sufficient reason for the Health Minister to breach the law.
“We do not think that the emergency situation created by the pandemic, and the urgency required, constituted sufficient reasons to bypass all of these steps that are required by law. As Parliament has indicated, it would have acted with the speed and urgency that the emergency required, had the request for approval been made to it,” said a statement from OccupyGhana, dated 9 August 2021.
Fred Dzakpata
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