Lawyer Eric Otchere Darko, a trustee of the National Cathedral of Ghana project in the United States, has responded to the latest exposé on the construction of the project by the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.
According to legal practitioner, the allegation made by the MP, including the National Cathedral being fraudulently registered, are mere fabrications.
Lawyer Otchere Darko explained that none of the clergymen on the Board of the Cathedral in Ghana are not on the Board of Trustees in the US because they are not US citizens.
He added that for a company to be registered under a person’s name in the US, the person must either be a US citizen or a US resident with a green card.
“The National Cathedral Foundation is a tax exemption company and for such a company can only be registered in the US by an American citizen or a green card holder with a social security number,” he said in Twi in an Okay FM interview monitored by GhanaWeb.
The lawyer also said that a claim by Ablakwa that the consultant of the cathedral project, Cary Lee Summers, was paid US$6 million and operates from a warehouse, is false.
He added that the facility Ablakwa went to was a warehouse and not the office of Lee Summers and that to the best of his knowledge, the consultant has been paid less than $1 million.
What Ablakwa said:
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa alleged that the American consultant to the National Cathedral project gave an official address that leads to a warehouse.
He said that when he visited the facility during his trip, he saw no offices but rather: “a ramshackle warehouse with the inscription: Churchill Coffee Company, Wholesale Division.”
“We also decided to embark on the long travel to Springfield in Missouri where Mr. Cary Lee Summers who has been given US$ 6 million of our money is described on the National Cathedral of Ghana website as Consultant for the United States.
“When we arrived at that address, there was nothing about the Nehemiah Group. We surprisingly saw quite a ramshackle warehouse with the inscription: Churchill Coffee Company, Wholesale Division,” he added.
The MP also said that Eric Okyere Darko, a member of the legal team of Assin Central Member of Parliament, Kennedy Agyapong, was listed as a trustee on the Ghana National Cathedral in Washington DC registration documents in the United States.
The MP stated in his social media post that per his checks, the project’s registration details in Ghana differed from what he got from that of the US.
Also, whiles eminent clergymen were dominant on the Board of Trustees in Ghana registration papers, in the case of the US, there were three persons.
The only common personality on both sides is Dr Paul Opoku-Mensah, the Executive Secretary to the National Cathedral of Ghana project.