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Former Finance Minister, Mr. Kwame Peprah, has expressed shock at an attempt by the British Serious Fraud Office (SFO-UK) to smear him with corruption, in its recent trail of Mabey and Johnson (M&J) over bribery charges. Responding to an inquiry by The Enquirer as to how he felt about his name being mentioned in the M&J Scandal, Mr. Peprah, who was also a former Minister of Energy and Mines, said he was still at a loss as to why the UK investigative agency sought to impugn his integrity, when there was no basis for that. According to him, �I really think it�s unfortunate that even though my name hasn�t cropped up to have received any money, my name has been dragged in, to the extent that they cite the ruling in the Quality Grain trail as evidence of a culture of corruption, when the trail judge in that case himself had stated that there was nothing like �stealing, corruption or embezzlement� against me and my other colleagues in that case.� Exactly a week ago today, Friday September 24, 2009: A Southwark Crown Court in London, presided over by Geoffrey Rivlin, convicted British bridge construction firm, Mabey and Johnson for intercontinental corrupt practices in their dealings with many countries, including Ghana. The decision sent shock waves through the length and breadth of the country, as some of the key persons cited in court documents, including Mr. Peprah, happened to be persons either holding public offices presently or had previously held top public offices in Ghana. But whereas former directors of M&J, whose conduct the court deemed to be criminal to warrant the conviction of the company, have been shielded from the public, by simply assigning letters to represent them, the SFO throws into its submissions with careless abandon, the names of officials in the countries where M&J operated. For instance, in dragging the names of Ghanaian public officials into the scandal and lacing them with a corruption tag, the SFO asserted among others: �Dr. Yankey was subsequently convicted in Ghana of conspiring to willfully cause losses to the state and served a prison sentence, along with Kwame Peprah,� continuing mischievously, that �Their convictions cannot be directly related to payments from M&J, but reflect the culture of government corruption at the time, a culture with which M&J was only too willing to engage.� The SFO argument that the conviction of Dr. George Yankey, former Director of Legal and International Affairs at the Finance Ministry and Mr. Peprah, reflected a �culture of government corruption at the time,� run contrary to the stated reason for their conviction. FLASHBACK Monday, April 28, 2003: Mr. Justice Dixon Kwame Afreh, an Appeal Court Judge, presiding over a Fast Track High Court, convicted Dr. Yankey, Mr. Peprah and Alhaji Ibrahim Adam, former Minister of Food and Agric Minister, on charges of causing financial loss to the state. In the two-year trail that had widely been deemed political, the trial judge, had stated categorically in his judgment that the accused persons were not being convicted for �corruption;� neither for �stealing�, nor was it for �embezzlement�! The judge had gone further to explain that the actions of the said officials had resulted in the state losing in a business deal. The question being asked is: �Why would a serious institution, in a respected democracy like Britain, wrongly cite that conviction as evidence of a corrupt environment and use that as a basis to scandalize Ghanaian public officials, while at the same time, hiding the identities of their �town folks,� whose actions they had defined as criminal and sought conviction from the court?� Worse still for the SFO, it had nothing to show even in its arguments citing also Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, Dr. Obed Asamoah or Alhaji Baba Kamara in its case. Regarding Alhaji Kamara, even though the SFO acknowledges that M&J found him strategically placed in a position of influence, including his wife being Secretary to then President Jerry John Rawlings which made him attractive to M&J for appointing him as their local representative, it strangely concluded without any evidence that: �The SFO believe that because he had demonstrated his effectiveness to attract business corruptly, he was appointed by M&J.� M&J was convicted for engaging in dubious business practices also in Jamaica, Madagascar, Angola, Mozambique, Bangladesh and Iraq. The Attorney-General, Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu has indicated that she has indicated that she had already contacted the British SFO and other relevant authorities and institutions both local and external to access full facts of the case and M&J�s activities in Ghana over the last two decades. Meanwhile, the national Democratic Congress (NDC) as well as Dr. Obed Asamoah has denied receiving bribes from M&J and have both welcomed the decision of the President to get to the bottom of the matter and let the law take its course.