Anansi's Gold by Yepoka Yeebo

Author:Yepoka Yeebo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

On January 1, 1982, investors in the Oman Ghana Trust Fund all over the world woke up to some deeply unwelcome news. Toward the end of the previous year, Robert Ellis had told them the conditions required by the Trust Fund would be met that Christmas. Investors were instructed to stay by their phones: “There’d be important news any day.” And so, they had waited by their phones all the way through Christmas, anticipating news that the Trust Fund, at long last, was ready to pay out. Instead, on New Year’s Day, the investors’ telephones finally rang, but it wasn’t about money. There had been another coup d’état. All of Blay-Miezah’s negotiations with the previous government—and all the money they had spent—had been wasted. “They’d have to start all over again.”3

In Philadelphia, agents at the FBI’s field office opened their morning papers. Just days before, their informant had told them that the money he had invested in the Oman Ghana Trust Fund was going to buy “weapons” for Ghana. Now, in the Washington Post, the FBI agents saw the news staring back at them: “Jerry Rawlings, Ghana’s last military ruler, took power once again this morning in a violent, military-supported overthrow4 of the 2-year-old civilian government he had shepherded into office.” There Rawlings was on page 13 of the Philadelphia Inquirer, too, in a rumpled flight suit, peaked cap, and patchy beard, posed like a scruffy catalog model.

Overnight, the Oman Ghana Trust Fund became a top priority. The director of the FBI, William H. Webster, authorized the Philadelphia field office to send in an undercover agent.

Two years before, the FBI’s Long Island field office had orchestrated the most successful undercover operation in the bureau’s history—Abscam—which secured convictions against Philadelphia City Council president George X. Schwartz and two other councilmen. The Long Island office had sent in a petty con man who pretended to be an Arab sheikh with millions to invest, in return for the right favors. The FBI’s Philadelphia office had been left embarrassed and sidelined, and now it needed a headline-grabbing case of its own. Soon, the telephone was ringing at the Oman Ghana Trust Fund—and an FBI agent was put through to Ellis.

The agent told Ellis that “he was interested in investing5 in the deal.” Ellis “indicated the deal was about to close,” but, he told the agent, there was still some time for him to invest, if he moved quickly. The two agreed to meet at the Roy Rogers restaurant on Route 130 in Pennsauken, New Jersey, on January 4.

The FBI arrived early. The parking lot of the Roy Rogers was staked out by agents with cameras and long lenses. The undercover agent had a Nagra tape recorder—the same model that the FBI had used for the Abscam stings—strapped to his body.

“Say howdy6 to fresh food at Roy Rogers!” urged the restaurant’s commercials. “Howdy, roast beef sandwich!” said a man in a business suit, with a big smile. At ten fifty-seven A.M.7, Ellis took a seat and—unbeknownst to him—said “Howdy” to an FBI agent.

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