Who owns Barclays account in Geneva?

Qanawu Gabby

By Thursday, August 16, 2007 the identity of a private account in Geneva, Switzerland in which about $1.7 million was transferred as bribe monies, was expected to be disclosed. This was shifted to December, and finally it seemed to us that the multi-million dollar settlement that Scancem's lawyer said could be the out-of-court settlement went through.

On the orders of Norway's Supreme Court, details of the Swiss account were supposed to be provided.

This should have helped in the appeal case that December, in which a former top employee of Scancem was accused of stealing more than $4 million allegedly meant as bribe monies to top Ghanaian personalities, namely PV Obeng and former President Jerry John Rawlings and his wife Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings.

In 2000, a report by Scancem International ANS, led by its in-house lawyer, Arne-Jørg Selen, discovered that an account at Unibank, Luxembourg, which all along they believed belonged to P V Obeng did in fact belong to one of the men who was responsible for putting money into that account, Tor Egil Kjelsaas, who was head of Scancem's cement operations in Africa, mainly Ghana and Togo. The other man was Per Jacobsen, head of finance, Scancem.
About $2.5 million had gone into that account in five years, from 1993 to 1998. Within the same period, another account held at Barclays, Geneva, Switzerland had received from Scancem another $1.7m.

This account, the Scancem bosses believed belonged to Ghana’s first lady at the time, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings.

About seven years ago, the Hibis Group, a UK-based anti-fraud and anti-corruption systems firm, with a branch on Drammensveien 39, Oslo, Norway, found out for Scancem that the Unibank account was in the name of Mr Kjelsaas. But, the investigators drew a blank on the Barclays account, allegedly in the name of Mrs Rawlings.

Mr Kjelsaas’ explanation to Scancem’s internal investigators, as contained in pleadings before a Norwegian District Court last year, was that the account was in his name "because he did not want to put the recipients at risk."

A similar investigation had been done by the old bosses of Scancem (before the Norwegians sold it to German firm HeidelbergCement in 1999) under Cato Holmsen, director of administration at the time.

Holmsem concluded in his report of January 2000 that in spite of some glaring irregularities with the operations of the slush funds, he could find no evidence that Kjelsaas misappropriated the bribery monies.

He had spoken to two of the intended recipients, a Togolese Minister of Industry Payadowa Boukpessi (and later Finance Minister), who was summoned to Oslo by Scancem and Ghana’s PV Obeng and had become convinced that at least those two received the bribes, if not all, as intended.

In court, however, Kjelsaas, who did not even attend proceedings, refused to cooperate and would not make available bank statements of the Unibank Bank account.

He, however, had strong witnesses in the persons of former executives of Scancem, including the highly respected Gerhard Heiberg, a former CEO and Chairman of Aker (former owners of Scancem), Per Jacobsen and Tor Nygaard to rally to his defence that indeed Scancem operated such a system of bribing top government officials and that the monies did get to their intended recipients through a system which operated on trust.

On the Barclays account, though, the court had absolutely nothing to go on.

Last June, the Norwegian Supreme Court decided to get to the bottom of it. Now it is left with the ailing 69-year-old Mr Kjelsaas to comply.

Between 1996 and 1998, a total sum of about $1.7m was paid into two private accounts, one at the Union Bank of Switzerland, Zurich and another at Citibank, Geneva. The transfers were marked either "Consultant General" or "Finders Fee".

Scancem officials made these payments to facilitate their bid at the time to obtain controlling shares in Cimtogo, the state-owned Togolese cement company.

The man who made that deal possible was the country’s Industry Minister, Payadowa Boukpessi. According to Scancem’s own internal investigation, he confirmed later to Holmsen, when he was invited to Oslo to assist with the investigation, that he received the payments as scheduled.

Interestingly, Scancem was around the same time in the process of buying more and more shares in Ghacem. In 1992, Government of Ghana owned 75% of Ghacem, by 1999, it had sold off all its stake in the company to the Norwegians.

The District Court of Norway in its judgment of last September held that Scancem knew who the monies were supposed to go to, and the purpose of the internal enquiry was to find out whether the moneys went to Kjelsaas.

In the court proceedings, Kjelsaas’s case was that the name the Unibank account was in was immaterial to the dispute. He was merely using an old account he had himself, as this was easiest. It was further argued that it was difficult for many recipients in Africa to open accounts abroad.

Kjelsaas was said to have withdrawn cash in London or Luxembourg and passed it on to the correct recipients. His witnesses contended that Kjelsaas took the money to Africa by air.

The defendant’s case was that it was useful for the account to be in his name when taking cash out. Little was said or known about the Barclays account, however.

Court testimonies given and evidence before the court showed that Scancem paid amounts to other accounts during this period which were controlled by African recipients.

Tor Nygaard, who headed Scancem operations in Ghana, for a long time, told the court that Scancem also paid out amounts in cash locally to a number of recipients in Ghana, usually in envelopes and that the person who undertook this exercise was a top Ghanaian executive at Ghacem, Accra at the time.

From 1993 to 1998, according to Scancem’s internal probe, a total amount of $1,690,000 was paid into the Barclays account in Geneva. $2,460,00 went into the Unibank account.

A very senior source at Scancem told me and Kweku Baako in 2007 that the company was baffled by the fact that more money went into the Unibank account than the Barclays account, and this became even more so after Mr Obeng resigned as top presidential staffer in December 1996.

He told us (captured on audio tape) that Scancem’s case was not about Mr and Mrs Rawlings or PV Obeng. The company accepts that some monies were certainly paid to top government officials in Ghana, and this may run into double the $4.1m being claimed back from Mr Kjelsaas.

"What we are saying is that this [$4.1m] is the amount that we have serious reasons to believe never really got to them but was taken by Kjelsaas."

When he was further questioned about the reliability of the evidence given by Mr Heiberg, the Scancem source said, "We don’t put enough weight on his evidence because these things happened after him, I believe. It was just a situation of the old bosses of Scancem coming to defend one of their own. That’s how we saw it."

He further stated that the German owners who took over Scancem in 1999 also intend with this trial to send a clear message that they "disapprove of the bribery scheme that was operated by the former owners of Scancem."

As was captured in the report filed for Dagens Naerinsgliv on April 21-22, "In the middle of the 1990s, there were two anonymous bank accounts in Unibank SA in Luxembourg and Barclays SA in Geneva in Switzerland which were earmarked 'Ghana’, and substantial amount was being paid in dollars to the said accounts from SCANCEM’s headquarters in Oslo."

As judge Trine Standal observed in the ruling, "Scancem itself established a system of bribery and corruption. The system required payments to be untraceable. The system can only be based on trust, and producing evidence in retrospect can be difficult. Kjelsaas finds it hard to prove he is innocent, and Scancem has a problem proving him guilty."

The decision by the Supreme Court of Norway to compel full disclosure of the Barclays account is a reflection of the court’s frustration: The trial judge held, "Tor Egil Kjelsaas has made absolutely no contribution to clarifying the matter, or to undermine Scancem International ANS’s claims against him.

":Tor Egil Kjelsaas’s health has deteriorated, admittedly, but he could have produced account statements, company documents etc. Tor Egil Kjelsaas’s failure to assist in clarifying matters affects how the Court sees the evidence."

Information reaching me by September 2007 was that Scancem might still reach some form of settlement with Kjelsaas before the December appeal. So, it seems it has come to pass?