Regular readers may remember a recent tweet about rumours that were circulating in the political back alleys of Accra regarding the function of fixers and go-betweens in the lauded "Gold for Oil" proposal of Ghana's Vice President.
We briefly discussed the advantages and potential of the entire Gold for Oil initiative previously. The Chamber of Bullion Traders, a gold trading lobby organisation in Ghana, was vehemently lobbying and briefing about their complaints over the Gold for Oil programme and the harm it was creating to their interests at the time the aforementioned tweet was sent.
According to their experts, the government's plan to seize huge amounts of gold from the small-scale mining industry in order to forward the gold and oil barter agenda might mean the end for some of their members and launch a slow-moving demise for the whole private gold exporting business.
It appears that all of the briefings and counter-briefings have enraged media activists who are hostile to the administration, who have taken the initiative this weekend.
Some of the charges made by WADR, a non-mainstream media source located in Washington, DC, which is highly hostile to the present Ghanaian administration, have been corroborated by some of the briefings circulating in the background of Ghanaian political discussion. Their claims are supported by invoices and trade papers that name actors who were discussed in private briefings as the program's architects.
According to the briefings, two incredibly quiet and clandestine investment bankers and dealmakers who occasionally serve as financial consultants to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair—who is a favourite counsellor of Ghana's Vice President—are at the centre of the intriguing scheme.
Reyhaan Aboo and Prashant Francis are the two men's respective principals at UAE-based Alphastream and London-based Portman Partners, respectively. They were crucial facilitators of Prime Minister Blair's now-dissolved, and previously intensely scrutinised, Firerush Ventures, notably Mr. Francis.
The major players behind Alphastream are former employees of JP Morgan who have strong ties to the American investment bank's influential Ghanaian network, which includes everyone from fund industry experts to a former junior finance minister.
Alphastream bills itself as a multi-commodity royalty streaming corporation and has its main investors in a Sovereign Wealth Fund of the United Arab Emirates. the same industry that the unfortunate Agyapa firm tried to join.
The Bank of Ghana has reportedly signed a covert arrangement to sell $1.1 billion worth of gold and an undefined amount of silver through Alphastream in order to raise cash for the purchase of refined petroleum products, which papers leaked to WADR have now confirmed.
There are many hypotheses, most of which are distasteful, as to what precise value Alphastream brings to a straightforward gold export transaction.
Regular readers will remember our previous tweet that Russia's Litasco had established itself in the UAE and was investigating innovative trades under pressure from the EU's escalating sanctions system following the invasion of Ukraine. According to reports, Litasco imported the first shipment of gasoil blends from the Baltic Port of Vystosk as part of the Gold for Oil initiative.
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