In August, an official report cleared Ghana’s presidential hopeful John Mahama of any corrupt dealings with European aerospace giant Airbus.
In an exclusive interview, Mahama’s brother Samuel tells The Africa Report all about the Airbus deal, and his associates, the UK actors Philip Middlemiss (Coronation Street), and Gary Webster (Minder).
The resemblance with John Mahama, Ghana’s former president, is uncanny. But the man who receives The Africa Report at his home in London on 1 November is his younger brother, Samuel Adam Mahama.
Dressed in a navy-blue shirt, grey chinos and slippers, the politician’s sibling is welcoming, if somewhat nervous. The greying 61-year-old knows the stakes. The general election that could bring John Mahama back to power in Accra, after eight years in opposition, is just weeks away. “I’m very private,” Samuel Mahama says. He has never before spoken to the press, and declines to be photographed for this article. He is nonetheless eager to speak on the record – to dispel any lingering questions about the Mahama’s’ probity.
His unguarded comments could have the opposite effect.
‘It’s a pleasant feeling to stand vindicated’
For nearly five years, the Mahama family has been embroiled in a vast corruption scandal. In January 2020, the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the United States’ Department of Justice revealed that Airbus had agreed to pay €3.6bn in fines after admitting to “endemic” corruption around the world. In particular, the aerospace company admitted that it had failed to prevent its executives from bribing a senior elected official in Ghana, via that official’s brother and a friend of the brother. The corruption, Airbus continued, took place in the context of its sale of three military aircraft – for an estimated €90m – to Ghana’s government.
The Western authorities withheld the names of the individuals involved. However, the SFO published enough information in its summary of the case that Ghanaian media were soon able to identify them. The incriminated official was John Mahama, Ghana’s vice president from 2009 to 2012, and its president from 2009 to 2012, and its president from 2012 to 2017; the brother was Samuel Mahama; the friend was Philip Middlemiss, a British actor.
Mahama’s Airbus scandal clearance reinvigorates campaign ahead of December election
Ghana’s Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) swiftly launched an investigation into all three men. Ghana obtained red notices from Interpol for the arrest of Samuel Mahama and Middlemiss. If arrested and convicted, both men risked up to 25 years in a Ghanaian prison. John Mahama’s political standing, meanwhile, was damaged.
The party of the incumbent president, Nana Akufo- Addo, seized on the affair to relentlessly question his integrity. “Let me state without any equivocation that no financial benefit accrued to me,” John Mahama fought back in an interview with The Daily Graphic in June 2020. “Neither was there any form of inducement in the purchase of the aircraft.” The OSP released its findings in August of this year. The special prosecutor found “no evidence” to suggest that Samuel Mahama and his associates had served as a conduit for corrupt payments to the former president. All arrest warrants were lifted. Reacting to the news, Kwame AsahAsante, a politics lecturer at the University of Ghana, said it would allow John Mahama to refocus his campaign on his vision for Ghana, “free from the shadow of the Airbus scandal”. “It’s a pleasant feeling to stand vindicated,” the presidential hopeful declared. ‘Sometimes, the president needs to shout at someone’ at someone’ Samuel Mahama denies any wrongdoing by him, his brother or Philip Middlemiss.
“Not one penny was a kickback, and not one penny was a bribe,” he says. He calls the British investigation perfunctory, and Airbus’s description of events unreliable. “He is so straight and incorruptible,” he says of John Mahama, who is a leading contender in the general election due to be held on 7 December. But over the course of an exclusive, four-hour-long interview with The Africa Report, Samuel Mahama confirms many central claims made public by the SFO and the Department of Justice in 2020. Samuel Mahama accepts that he and Middlemiss facilitated Airbus’s supply of C-295 military transport aircraft to Ghana; that neither he nor Middlemiss had any prior experience in the aerospace industry; that Airbus paid them €2.75m; and that Airbus circumvented its compliance system by paying them indirectly, through a third party.
Samuel Mahama also says that Airbus likely hired him in 2009 because his brother was John Mahama. He further concedes that John Mahama, as a senior government official, was involved in the arms deal. Asked about specific interactions with his brother, Samuel Mahama confirms the SFO’s claim that he, John Mahama and Airbus executives met in London in January 2011. They discussed the C-295 project, he says. He also confirms the veracity of an email dated 9 November 2013, which the SFO cited in its public summary of the case against Airbus. In that email, Samuel Mahama told an Airbus executive: “I am hoping to meet [my brother] tomorrow so hopefully will have some more news tomorrow, I believe they all need you to arrive in order for us to move it forward.”
Why was he meeting John Mahama in November 2013? Samuel Mahama says that the president’s help was at times needed to advance the C-295 project. “Sometimes he needs to shout at someone to say, ‘Why is this stuck here?’,
” Samuel Mahama tells The Africa Report. “These are the things that they [Airbus] write to me, asking me to help them with,” he recalls of his involvement. “He [an Airbus executive] writes to me directly saying, ‘Please, can you pass this on to your brother?’.” ‘It wasn’t a few rogue employees’ Ghana’s special prosecutor found no evidence of corruption. But he accepted the SFO’s finding that Airbus executives deliberately circumvented the company’s own compliance rules by routing payment to Samuel Mahama and Middlemiss through a third party.
The prosecutor called that approach “wrongful and deceptive”. According to the SFO, Airbus compliance staff had objected to the involvement in the project of individuals “close to the decision makers” in Ghana. Samuel Mahama confirms that Airbus executives told him that, because of his family ties, he would have to be paid indirectly. Asked about Airbus’s methods at the time, Samuel Mahama says: “It was a culture of it.” A culture of what? “Of what they were doing around the world, a culture of: they’re bribing.”
“It wasn’t a few rogue employees,” he continues. “It was more than that.” He nonetheless argues that Western authorities’ corruption case against Airbus was far weaker in Ghana than elsewhere. And he stresses that, while Airbus has been fined for bribery, he hasn’t been charged with any crime. “That’s a very important distinction,” he says.
Airbus declined to comment.
“It is essential that there is proper accountability for all those involved in bribery schemes, including middlemen who profit from fixing dodgy deals,” Susan Hawley, executive director of the British NGO Spotlight on Corruption, tells The Africa Report.
“This is particularly important where middlemen are clearly chosen because of their family connections to those in the highest positions of power.
Ghana’s special prosecutor has stated that, during his probe, he was not privy to the raw body of evidence available to UK and US authorities. “Law enforcement bodies in the global north conducting extensive investigations into corporate corruption have a responsibility to share intelligence and responsibility to share intelligence and findings with global south enforcement partners to ensure opaque payments can be tracked and the ultimate recipients of bribes can be uncovered,” Hawley reacts. “They should also proactively explore all mechanisms to ensure that there is accountability whether it be through sanctions or confiscating potential proceeds of bribery.” “It is not clear whether this happened in this case,” she concludes.
‘There’s not a Ferrari outside’ Samuel Mahama says that, after expenses, he and Middlemiss evenly split the €2.75m that Airbus paid them. He says that he does not know what Middlemiss did with his share. Middlemiss declined to comment.
The former president’s brother lives in an unremarkable three-bedroom house in one of the most affordable areas of London. The home is in his wife’s name. He has resided there for more than 20 years, he says, adding that he has no other assets. Two Audis are parked outside. One is old, the other leased, he says. Leased, he says. “I don’t live in Belgravia, I live in Penge,” he smiles. “There’s not a Ferrari outside.” Where, then, did the Londoner’s share of the €2.75m go? Samuel Mahama says that none of the money went to his brother. Instead, he says that he spent it on business development, as he sought to expand his consultancy work for Airbus beyond Ghana – to Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Suriname. He says that he funded his staff and travel expenses himself.
He adds that the consultancy business he tried to develop outside Ghana never yielded any paid work: “I spent a lot of money on the Nigeria [sales] campaign that came to nothing. Spent a lot of money on Kenya that came to nothing. I went to Suriname several times, that came to nothing.” According to the SFO, the payment to Samuel Mahama was intended to induce or reward improper favour by his brother towards Airbus.
No evidence of financial transfers to the former president has emerged.. John Mahama vehemently denies having received any Airbus money. ‘Airbus knew who my brother was’ Samuel Mahama says that Airbus spontaneously approached him in September or October 2009. “I was pleased,” he says. “I thought, what a great opportunity. The mighty Airbus are coming to us [asking] if you could help them in Africa. Wouldn’t you be pleased?” Asked whether Airbus wanted to collaborate with him because of his connection to John Mahama, he demurs: “I don’t want to say something that is going to cause an issue.” Before finally answering: “I would suspect, having seen what they’ve done now, yes.” “They had an agenda, because they knew who, clearly, my brother was,” he says. But he adds that he never gave Airbus an advantage in selling planes to the Mahama administration. By late 2009, he argues, the government had already decided to buy the aircraft from Airbus. No bribery could have advanced the sale, in his could have advanced the sale, in his telling, as the deal was already agreed. “It was all settled,” he says.
But asked when Ghana signed the contracts with Airbus, he confirms the dates given by the SFO: August 2011 for the purchase of the first two aircraft, March 2015 for the purchase of the third. In other words, in late 2009, when Samuel Mahama says that he started working for Airbus, John Mahama had recently become vice president, and the deal was yet to be finalized.
What role did Samuel Mahama play?
At one point in the interview, he states that he merely provided “marketing, local support and administrative services”. But at another, he says: “They [Airbus] would not have been able to overcome certain hurdles if I had not intervened, on the third aircraft for example.” He does not specify what hurdles he cleared.
Addressing the role played by middlemen, John Mahama declared in 2020: “All the processes and negotiations by the government in the acquisition of the aircraft were conducted directly with Airbus and my administration without any untoward influence either directly or indirectly through any agents it may have appointed.”
In any case, Samuel Mahama says that his and Middlemiss’s receipt of a 5% commission from Airbus was contingent on the successful sale of the C-295s. They received their commission for the first two planes, he continues. Samuel Mahama says he worked on the third aircraft not with Middlemiss but with another actor friend, Gary Webster. The former president’s brother adds that no commission was paid for the sale of the third plane. For that reason, Airbus still owes him €1.675m, he argues. ‘I didn’t need sales or technical expertise’ Samuel Mahama says he has remained close with his brother despite the scandal. “People blame me for him scandal. “People blame me for him being vilified by this government, for people using that against him,” he says. “He doesn’t blame me, but people around him do.”