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The excitement over a possible exoneration of former government officials implicated in the Mabey & Johnson (M&J) bribery saga has been shot down by the Commissioner on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) who described the sentiments as premature. Justice Francis Emile Short, the learned gentleman whose outfit has been charged with the task of probing the involvement of the personalities cited in the scandal, expressed the position while responding to questions on Joy FM yesterday. The legal exercise by CHRAJ would, as Justice Short stated, be premised on the allegation and admission by M&J Directors that funds from the firm were paid into the Ghana Development Fund. Even though there are bottlenecks with regard to assembling all documents about the scandal involving high-profile National Democratic Congress (NDC) officials, CHRAJ says whoever wants to jubilate should wait until after the outcome of a public hearing on the matter. Such exoneration, he indicated, can only be considered at the formal hearing of the case when �the CHRAJ would look at the evidence available�. Following certain developments in the yet-to-open case at CHRAJ, there was muffled excitement, especially among sympathizers of Dr. George Adjah-Sipa Yankey, one of the persons implicated in the saga. Sipa Yankey admitted to receiving money from the corrupt company but said he did not know that it was bribe money. Kwame Gyan, one of the lawyers of the former Health Minister who resigned in the heat of the revelation that he took �15,000, while speaking to Oman FM yesterday morning, asked that in view of what has transpired so far, the case should be discontinued. That might not be for now, especially following the insistence of the CHRAJ Boss that the case will take its full course. Excerpts of the hearing at the Crown Court at Southwark bring to the fore startling revelations about the interface between the bridge engineers and local politicians as contained in the unfolding paragraphs. Mr. J. Hardy, a lawyer of the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) referred the presiding judge in the case, Judge Rivlin, to the telltale heading of an internal memorandum from the company directors of M&J. The title of the memo, �Re: POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS /FUTURE CONTRACTS� and the juxtaposition in it, according to Lawyer Hardy, was significant and self-explanatory. Lawyer Hardy stated: �It is dated 9th May 1996 my Lord. It relates to political contributions and future contracts in Ghana. Those words themselves, we respectfully suggest, indicate the reality of what Mabey and Johnson were then doing in those jurisdictions.� As regards the origin of the Ghana Development Fund, Lawyer Hardy told the court that �Mabey and Johnson created a national fund of �750,000 which was called the Ghana Development Fund�. Continuing, he pointed out that �from that fund direct payments to public officials, both elected politicians and civil servants, were made�. The British lawyer explained to the court that �in total, as far as Count 1 is concerned, between December 1994 and 18th August 1999, �470,792.60 were paid in bribes�. Turning to �specific facts of the corrupt practices carried out in Ghana�, he pointed out that from mid-1980s to roughly 1996, Mabey & Johnson were represented by a certain Kwame Ofori. The man, according to the lawyer, controlled a bridge building company and therefore had considerable influence within the ruling circles of the NDC at the time. No matter the seeming legitimate title, the funds accrued by the Ghana Development Fund, the lawyer told the court, were used by the company for corruption purposes. The contract person, Mr. Ofori, Lawyer Hardy disclosed, along the line became less influential and in April 1996 when he attended a Mabey & Johnson meeting in Twyford, complained that the site management in Ghana was not distributing funds and this, he said, affected the company�s fortunes in the country. A better person who could serve as an efficient conduit for the company�s business interest was therefore sought. This was how the name Kwame Peprah popped up. As Finance Minister, the lawyer told the court that the man was introduced to Mabey & Johnson by another man called Baba Kamara otherwise called I.B. Ibraimah, who was as he put it, the NDC Treasurer. Another internal memo, Lawyer Hardy told the court, had it that Baba Kamara had considerable influence over Ato Quarshie, the then Roads Minister and other top ranking officials. This development, he told the court, yielded positive dividends which he put across to the court thus: �This has been demonstrated over the allocation of an extra �1.3 million for the Tano Bridge and �4.5 million allocation for the Priority Bridge programme.� As Baba Kamara became prominent in the transactions, Ofori gradually diminished in relevance. Mr. Kamara, the court was told, played a major role through the Ghana Development Fund. �Mr. Kamara was useful in another sense, since Mabey & Johnson through the Ghana Development Fund made contributions to the ruling political party and improper corrupt donations to politicians,� he stressed. The payments, he expatiated, did not relate to the stages of the contracts but rather �the intention of securing and maintaining those contracts. Payments were made for a variety of purported purposes, to a variety of ministers and officials�. Through their corruption activities in Ghana during the period under review, the lawyer told the court, the company �was able to enter into the three major contracts with the Ministry of Roads and Highways for the provision of bridges. Priority Bridge Programme Number 1, worth �14.5 million, was agreed in 1994.� Continuing, he stated that �programme number 3 was worth in the region of �8 million and agreed in 1996 and the feeder roads project worth �3.5 million was agreed in 1998.� Presiding Judge Rivlin responded to the foregone thus: �Well I received a note earlier this week that the payments received on the Ghanaian contracts by Mabey & Johnson were valued at �26 million.� Mabey & Johnson, a key bridge construction firm in many developing countries, was dragged to court in the UK for breaching British laws as regards bribing, to secure contracts. In both Jamaica and Ghana, names of top government officials were dropped. In Ghana, two persons cited in the scandal, Dr. George Sipa-Yankey and Alhaji Amadu Seidu, both ministers, resigned when news about the scandal made the headlines. With the CHRAJ Chief declaring that nobody has been exonerated yet, a clear signal appears to have been sent about how serious the commission will handle the investigation even as curious Ghanaians take issue with what for them is a pussyfooting on the subject.