When the President’s Brother Sues You

I got word this afternoon via social media that the brother of Ghana’s President, and the Chief Executive of mining services firm, Engineers & Planners, has sued me for 10 million Ghana Cedis (GHS), the equivalent of about $1 million on Ghana’s frothy forex market.

What is the source of his ire? He takes strong objections to remarks I made in an essay scrutinising and criticising how the government went about with its plan to nationalise a gold mine currently run by Gold Fields, a large mining concern.

Here are the specific remarks he doesn’t like:

Within these blobs of text, he considers the following opinions to be defamatory of his good name and that of his company:

After carefully examining the suit with my lawyers, we have decided to vigorously defend the court proceedings for the following reasons.

1. There is nothing in the comments complained of that can remotely be described as defamatory. We are not responsible for the elaborate twists extracted from those innocuous words by the lawyers of Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, the plaintiff in this suit.
2. The lawsuit is a classic example of what in the US is known as a SLAPP – “strategic lawsuit against public participation“. It is designed to scare away analysts and activists from even the most basic scrutiny of Mr. Ibrahim Mahama and his company. Such a situation shall place them above every sense of accountability even when they get involved in matters bordering on, or entangled, with public interest and/or public resources.

My defence is so plain and straightforward, and so without any shred of guile, that I intend to provide the highlights right away. I have no interest in waiting to ambush counsel for Mr. Mahama at trial.

1. The first entry in the “particulars of defamation” is a logical deduction from the business relationship between Engineers & Planners (E&P) and Gold Fields. E&P is the mining contractor for Gold Fields at Damang. It receives significant income from mining and hauling gold ore for and on behalf of Gold Fields at Damang (and Tarkwa).
2. It is common knowledge, also attested to in Gold Fields’ annual reports, that 2022 was the last year of full production at Damang under the Pit Cutback project. From 2023 onwards, Gold Fields has mostly processed stockpiles. To the extent that E&P has not been engaged in its usual mining activities for a major client, standard analytical judgement would lead to the conclusion that it has been “hit very hard”.
3. Regarding the second entry in the particulars of defamation, I reiterate that E&P has some unhappy creditors. Any analyst who follows the company well knows about this. It is hardly unusual that in a capital-intensive industry like mining that a big company like E&P would have some unhappy creditors. Some of the biggest companies in the world in some of the most advanced markets are constantly restructuring debt facilities and engaging in “liability management” due to market stresses. For example, last month, corporate debt restructurings rose 60% in the US as headwinds gathered. It is very doubtful that any of the creditors involved were not up in arms about the turn of events.
4. At any rate, some of E&P’s creditor woes are in the public domain and therefore common knowledge to any diligent analyst. My essay would, thus, have come as no surprise to any serious players in the market, and could not therefore have done anything to impair E&P’s goodwill and business reputation.
5. For example, publicly available information shows that E&P was loaned $68 million to improve fleet availability at the Damang mine in 2020. E&P was not able to keep up with payments leading to the recording of impairments and piled up interest. It is doubtful that E&P’s creditors would object to to the use of the phrase, up in arms, about the credit loss provisioning they had to endure.
6. If it is necessary for the defence, different creditors shall be subpoenaed to speak to their demand notices and expressions of unhappiness in order to gauge whether they have ever been up in arms about their loans to E&P.
7. For the grammatical education of all of us non-native English speakers, Oxford Languages’ online dictionary defines the idiom, up in arms, to mean: “protesting vigorously about something.”
8. We are certain that the facts, elicited through discovery, will bear us out in court that some creditors of E&P have protested vigorously about overdue debt payments at least once in the recent past.

It is vitally important that public scrutiny is heightened when a company run by a wealthy and powerful individual like Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, whose brother is none other than the sitting President, is placed in a position where it could continue to provide mining services to a nationalised mine. Especially when the service rates involved in such a situation would have to be set in the best commercial interests of the Republic.

However, the fear of lawsuits has created an atmosphere of censorship in Ghana whenever the interests of powerful and wealthy companies are placed in the spotlight. I for one do not intend to honour this tradition. It does not serve as a good example to the next generation of public interest analysts and activists in Ghana if those of us who have been in this trade for nearly two decades buckle from covering the affairs of the rich and powerful. And only because such individuals can afford to hire lawyers to file random lawsuits every time their name is mentioned in connection with important public policy issues in a tone they don’t like.

Accountability, as I like to say, is a marathon. We shall continue to provide fair, objective, and unflinching coverage of the business affairs of Mr. Ibrahim Mahama and Engineers & Planners whenever the public interest demands so.