Lawyer Details Why Ibrahim Mahama Lacks Legal Basis To Sue Manasseh Over UMB Cash

UK-based Ghanaian legal practitioner Kofi Opare Hagan Esq has said there is nothing legally wrong with Engineers and Planners debt being impugned on the person of Ibrahim Mahama. 

Manasseh Azure Awuni had in his book ‘The President Ghana Never Got’ alleged that the businessman brother of John Mahama owed a huge sum to Merchant Bank (now Universal Merchant Bank, UMB), which contributed to its eventual collapse in 2013. 

Lawyers for the businessman write to the journalist-author to apologize and retract that section as it was not only false and inaccurate but potentially defamatory.  

His lawyers say the businessman has never been personally indebted to Merchant Bank or its successor, UMB Bank.  Rather, the loan was taken by Engineers & Planners Company Limited, a separate legal entity from Mahama, and that the full loan amount of $28 million was paid off in February 2014.  

Manasseh Azure has since apologized. 

Reacting to this development, Lawyer Kofi Opare Hagan said it is factual that at some point in time a company owned whether fully or partly by Ibrahim Mahama owed UMB. 

The lawyer dismissed the argument of the shareholder or owner being different from the company although “Ibrahim Mahama has a distinct identity from his companies, it is still substantially true that he is a key shareholder and therefore acts of the company can be imputed on him as a key shareholder or to the extent of his shareholding”. 

Touching on the case of defamation, the lawyer said the statement even if false cannot be outright defamatory as “a business man owing a bank is not a crime or offense for which a defamatory imputation can attach.” He wrote. 

Read his full opinion below: 

I have been scanning for the so called defamatory material in this text.

The key to defamation is to ask whether the statements and imputations made by the statement is true or substantially true.

The gist of the statement is that at some point Ibrahim Mahama was indebted to a Bank. Even if that statement is false, that statement by itself won’t amount to defamation. Because in the mind of the average sane reasoning Ghanaian, a business man owing a bank is not a crime or offense for which a defamatory imputation can attach. 

So it has to be Ibrahim Mahama demonstrating how that statement defames him in the mind of sane minded Ghanaians. 

Second, even if it is argued that Ibrahim Mahama has a distinct identity from his companies, it is still substantially true that he is a key shareholder and therefore acts of the company can be imputed on him as a key shareholder or to the extent of his shareholding. 

It is thus substantially true that Ibrahim Mahama was indebted at some point. There is absolutely no defamation.

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