{"id":32813,"date":"2023-05-05T13:33:53","date_gmt":"2023-05-05T13:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=32813"},"modified":"2023-05-05T13:33:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-05T13:33:56","slug":"sue-mathias-and-al-jazeera-at-the-international-court-of-justice-kwame-jantuah-tells-akufo-addo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/05\/05\/sue-mathias-and-al-jazeera-at-the-international-court-of-justice-kwame-jantuah-tells-akufo-addo\/","title":{"rendered":"Sue Mathias And Al Jazeera At The International Court Of Justice \u2013 Kwame Jantuah Tells Akufo-Addo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Private legal practitioner Mr Kwame Jantuah has said that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo should have written to Al Jazeera Network and Mr Alistair Mathias simultaneously to retract and apologize for the documentary in which it was stated that\u00a0he, Mr Akufo-Addo, acted as a lawyer for Mathias, a Canadian Gold smuggler and money launderer, and also benefited from an alleged $100million infrastructure contract awarded to Mathias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Jantuah said on the Big Issue on TV3 Friday, May 5 with host Roland Walker that it was Mathias who made the claims and only used Al Jazeera as the tool for the broadcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDefamation is in two forms, the libel aspect which is written and there is the slanderous aspect which is oral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the president going to Al Jazeera, he could equally have sent a letter to Mathias to retract. Because the issue of Al Jazeera is the fact that they broadcast it but the real issue is what Mathias said in the broadcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat he said in the broadcast [the President] sees it as malicious, sees it as defamatory so why didn\u2019t [he] go for him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom the first encounter of sending the letter to Al Jazeera a similar letter should have been sent to Mathias, it is Mathias who made the statement and used Al Jazeera as the platform to convey that message.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Jantuah further suggested to the President to sue Alistair Mathias and the Doha-based media conglomerate at the International Court of Justice after Al Jazeera said it would not retract and apologize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat is left for to do is to take on Mathias and maybe add Al Jazeera to it,\u201d Mr Jantuah who is a leading member of the Convention People\u2019s Party (CPP) stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al Jazeera Network said it has responded to the letter that was written to them by Mr Akufo-Addo<\/a>, demanding an apology and retraction for a documentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was after a journalist with TV3 wrote to Al Jazeera, enquiring whether or not they received the letter from Ghana\u2019s Presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a response Al Jazeera said: \u201cWe have responded to the letter from the president of the Republic of Ghana, correcting some parts of its content and clarifying various points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPrior to the publication of Gold Mafia, we wrote to the president outlining the claims made by Alistair Mathias. The president\u2019s response appears near the end of the documentary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Portions of the letter to Al Jazeera dated 25th April 2023 said: \u201cThe documentary in question made baseless claims that the President acted as a lawyer for one Mr Alistair Mathias and implied that the president personally benefited unlawfully from an alleged $100million state infrastructure contract purportedly awarded to Mr Mathias.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It added: \u201cIt is imperative that you act forthwith on this request within seven days from the date of receipt of this letter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final episode of Al Jazeera\u2019s undercover investigation into Mathias\u2019 gold smuggling and money-laundering activities across Africa, he boastfully claimed to have relationships with various presidents on the continent including President Akufo-Addo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He described Ghana\u2019s President as a good friend and alleged that the President was his lawyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The President\u2019s lawyer Kow Essuman also refuted a<\/strong>ttempts to link Mr Akufo-Addo to  Alistair Mathias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a tweet on Sunday 16 April 2023, Essuman wrote that: \u201cThe President has not been in private practice since 2000, neither has the President nor his law firm, Akufo-Addo, Prempeh and Co. acted as a lawyer for this Alistair Mathias or Guldrest\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe President does not know this Mathias or Guldrest. Ignore the spurious allegations\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC)<\/a> latched on to these claims and raised various accusations against the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the claims were denied by legal counsel to the President, Kow Essuman who revealed that President Akufo-Addo had not been in private practice as a lawyer since 2000 and his legal chambers has not in any way acted as lawyers to Alistair nor any of his associates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mathias is a gold trader with expertise in designing money laundering schemes, a skill that he claims has given him access to heads of states across the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posing as Chinese criminals seeking to launder money from Africa, Al Jazeera\u2019s investigative team caught up with Mathias who spilled out his modus operandi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The so-called financial architect also boasted about his alleged relationships with Presidents of some countries and the king of Swaziland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no head of states or president that either of us can\u2019t get to on this continent. Next door in Swaziland, the king is a close friend of mine. Zambia\u2019s President is a close friend of mine. DRC, the president has invited me several times to come build a refinery\u201d, he claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Private legal practitioner Mr Kwame Jantuah has said that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo should have written to Al Jazeera Network and Mr Alistair Mathias simultaneously to retract and apologize for the documentary in which it was stated that\u00a0he, Mr Akufo-Addo, acted as a lawyer for Mathias, a Canadian Gold smuggler and money launderer, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":32816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43,1],"tags":[4836,1648,13052,11264,9678,5369,11017,7421,6693,10484,10507,10933,913,8875,597,920,192,5918,12234,8995,10954,10197,6030,10419,10342,10776,7851,9775,10423,5612,10346,281,11973,12238,8386,7574,3805,7669,371,11431,6348,594,6137],"class_list":["post-32813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-access","tag-africa","tag-akufo","tag-allegations","tag-apology","tag-architect","tag-canadian","tag-chinese","tag-congress","tag-convention","tag-court","tag-defamation","tag-democratic","tag-doha","tag-drc","tag-episode","tag-ghana","tag-gold","tag-host","tag-infrastructure","tag-international","tag-investigation","tag-journalist","tag-justice","tag-law","tag-lawyer","tag-legal-practitioner","tag-mafia","tag-mine","tag-money","tag-money-laundering","tag-ndc","tag-one","tag-oral","tag-platform","tag-presidency","tag-president","tag-president-nana-addo-dankwa-akufo-addo","tag-president-of-the-republic","tag-refinery","tag-us","tag-who","tag-zambia"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}