Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has said the Airbus scandal is an embarrassment for Ghana’s image on a global scale.

He narrated to Joy News how embarrassed he was as a Ghanaian when the issue came up when he recently met some international investors in the United Kingdom. 

“I was in London a couple of days ago on the roadshow, it was embarrassing when you meet international investors, who during the coffee break say, ‘Oh this is very very sad. Is this what happens? You take bribes before you do deals for Ghana?’ and we were there at the table doing a deal for Ghana,” he told Daniel Dadzie on the Super Morning Show, Thursday.

He continued, “I felt embarrassed for the UK, French, and American governments to put Ghana’s name literally out there without mentioning names and just putting some clues here and there.”

“This a matter that in reality that has a very high potential to bring our nation’s image down,” the Minister added.

Ghana is one of five countries in which the European aviation giant, Airbus, paid or attempted to pay millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for contracts, leading a court in Britain to slap a fine of £3 billion on the company. In court documents and hearings, Airbus admitted five counts of failing to prevent bribery, using a network of secret agents to pay large-scale backhanders to officials in foreign countries, including Ghana, to land high-value contracts. The scheme was run by a unit at Airbus’ French headquarters, which its one-time chief executive, Tom Enders, reportedly called “bullshit castle”.

He explained that it is important for the names of the people involved in the Airbus scandal to be made public so follow up investigations can be done, as was done in the Mabey and Johnson scandal in 2009.

Pertaining to the Airbus scandal, he said, “the specific disclosures have not been made and we are all left to speculate. It is not fair to Ghana,” he said.

He explained that it is important for the disclosure to be made because “we cannot run a country in which every morning we have a new allegation and a new suspicion on mass media and then the next week we move to the next one.”

The Ofoase Ayeribi MP also expressed his disappointment in civil society organisations who have not yet written a joint statement on the matter.

“I’m expecting to see a statement expressing concern from them that shows concerns that it is not fair and we need to have disclosure,” he added.