The National Cathedral Secretariat has denied accusations of improper behavior made against it by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, and has insisted that his charges are true only with regard to the legal and regulatory system in the United States.
The MP made several false accusations on Facebook, according to the secretariat.
The National Cathedral of Ghana and the Bible Museum Foundation Incorporated, USA, have been accused of falsifying documents and using false identities, according to Mr. Ablakwa, who also serves as the ranking member of the Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee. He also claims that the office of American consultant Cary Summers was located in a warehouse.
Conference
Dr. Paul Opoku-Mensah, executive director of the National Cathedral of Ghana, stated during a news conference last Friday in Accra that the secretariat was carrying out the project with responsibility and honesty.
"All claims made are untrue.
The National Cathedral project is not illegal; we are carrying it out with honesty and responsibility both inside and outside of Ghana, he stated.
He claimed that the foundation was a special-purpose entity established to handle the project's American fundraising requirements.
He said that the tax returns for 2021 had already been filed by the foundation and that they would be filed for 2022 on May 15, 2023.
While the Parliament has supervision responsibilities, according to Dr. Opoku-Mensah, those should be carried out in Parliament or by statutory entities that have been put in place.
He said the allegations were having an impact on US and Ghanaian fundraising efforts.
To be able to gather the funds necessary to complete the construction, he remarked, "We need some quietness."
Foundation for the National Cathedral
One of the two trustees for the foundation, a Ghanaian lawyer living in New York named Eric Okyere Darko, revealed that the charity employed a company named Corporate Services Company to register the National Cathedral.
He described the Corporate Services Company as a registered business whose responsibility it was to aid with the registration of the businesses and act as their agent, resulting in the agent's address being placed on the registration form.
The clerics weren't included in the registration documents because they weren't US citizens or permanent residents, according to Mr. Okyere Darko, who further clarified this.
Security benefits
Regarding the claim regarding the foundation's social security number, Mr. Okyere Darko stated that the employee identification number given to the charity was granted by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
He said that although the foundation was given a nine-digit identification number, the pattern used by all businesses began with two digits, a hyphen, and then seven digits.
He said that a person's social security number in the US was nine digits long and began with three separated digits.
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