Twelve years after being arrested in Switzerland for dealing in narcotic drugs, Frank Benneh, a former Career Diplomat has disclosed that he was an undercover cocaine courier for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the ‘powers that be’ at the time of his arrest.

Mr. Benneh on Saturday told DAILY GUIDE that he was by then attached to Ghana’s foreign intelligence and that was the platform on which he engaged in the drug trade for the NDC, saying money from the trade was piled in a secret bank account which the party accessed later.

“As part of my duties, I was sending certain parcels round and some of the parcels contained the substance so I would give those ones to a certain retired Army Colonel and he would give me a cheque which I would then pay into a special account in Werchestine, a City-State in the US and this money was being accessed occasionally by the NDC.

“What are we talking about? I mean I was used by the PNDC and then the NDC as a courier. I was then in foreign intelligence and was based in Switzerland… I am a living testimony of the NDC’s drug trade; they used what they called ‘use him and sacrifice him,” Mr. Benneh disclosed.

Earlier in an address to several thousands of New Patriotic Party (NPP) sympathizers at a rally organized by the Movement for Effective Leadership, Mr. Benneh had noted: “I was not working for myself, I was working for the powers that be but when it came to the crunch, I was dropped by the powers that be. I am pointing an accusing finger at them and I am prepared to face any consequence.”

The self-confessed drug courier said he had received several threats on his life but was not perturbed because he was determined to put out the truth about his drug dealings with the NDC.

“There is a military strategy that the best form of defence is to attack so they are hiding their own and accusing others of dealing in drugs; that is what the NDC is doing.

If you have any hand to point at drug traffickers in this country, point it to the NDC because they were the ones who were doing it,” he added.

Frank Benneh, during the NDC era, was a Career Diplomat attached to Ghana's Permanent Mission at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland and is not the only narcotics drug courier to accuse the NDC of engaging in drug trafficking.

In 1996, a Dutch national, Theodorus Van Der Laanm who was arrested in Ghana for exporting five containers of marijuana to the United Kingdom, claimed that he was forced to export the drugs as a means of raising funds for the campaign of the NDC.

The arrest of Mr. Benneh in 1996 was a major diplomatic scandal in Ghana. The then government, in an attempt to cow the media into docility and prevent it from continuous reportage of the story, was quick to haul to court, the editors of two private newspapers who dared touch on the issue.

Last Sunday’s mammoth rally was to attract undecided voters to the NPP and was patronized by several thousands of women and youth.

Frances Asiam, leader of the Movement for Effective Leadership told the crowd that the best person to lead Ghana is the NPP flag-bearer, Nana Akufo-Addo.

She mentioned Nana Addo’s consistent belief in the respect for human rights and the rule of law, good governance and multi–party democracy as well as the track record of the NPP-led government as reasons for which the NPP should be given another term in office.

For several hours, she held the mammoth crowd spell-bound as she narrated the ordeal she went through under the NDC.

Other speakers including Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe compared the eight-year rule of the NPP to 18-years of the Jerry Rawlings-led administration, and urged the crowd not to take the country backward by voting for the NDC.


Source: Daily Guide