The Ministry of Information and Media Relations has denied widespread reports that President John Dramani Mahama may have used a US plane reportedly leased to his brother\u2019s Company, Engineer and Planners Limited, for official travels.<\/p>\n
The plane, owned by a small community bank in Utah, had parked last week at Tehran\u2019s airport, provoking questions about why an American plane was in Tehran, the capital of a country under US sanctions.<\/p>\n
A New York Times report on Saturday quoted unnamed former Federal officials as saying \u201cthey believed that the plane has been used to transport President Mahama before\u201d.<\/p>\n
The paper said the unnamed officials based their \u201cconjecture partly on the plane\u2019s known itineraries from photos posted online.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report also said, \u201cOne image captured the plane flying to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where President Mahama spoke in September. The Ghanaian president was also in London last October when the aircraft was spotted leaving there for Accra.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, a Deputy Minister in the Mahama government issued a strong denial of the claims on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can state on authority that President Mahama has never travelled on the aircraft in question,\u201d Felix Ofosu Kwakye said in a CitiNews interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, the claims in the New York Times that the aircraft in question was spotted in Davos and in London on occasions that the President travelled to these destinations is [sic] at best speculative,\u201d Mr Kwakye, a Deputy Minister for Information and Media Relations, said.<\/p>\n
He went on, \u201cThe President has at his disposal a presidential aircraft which he uses for his travels. In the event that the aircraft proves to be inadequate\u2026 other arrangements are made.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Friday, Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry said that the plane had been used to transport top Ghanaian officials as part of a broader push to expand cooperation between Ghana and Iran.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Kwakye told CitiNews<\/strong> Iran\u2019s claims are equally misleading.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernment has not sent any official delegation to Tehran on the aircraft in question\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Citing an E & P statement issued on Saturday, the Deputy Minister said, \u201cThe delegation that went to Tehran went there in their private capacity. It was not a travel sanctioned by government and we need to put it on record that no such delegation was sent from Ghana.\u201d<\/p>\n But, he said, \u201cGovernment has good relations with Iran and therefore has no difficulty if Ghanaian citizens go there to transact business\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By: Evans Effah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Ministry of Information and Media Relations has denied widespread reports that President John Dramani Mahama may have used a US plane reportedly leased to his brother\u2019s Company, Engineer and Planners Limited, for official travels. The plane, owned by a small community bank in Utah, had parked last week at Tehran\u2019s airport, provoking questions about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":11580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[43,38,17],"class_list":["post-14765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-wassa-akropong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}