Her name is Ms. Gizelle Yajzi. She is reported to be half-Iraqi. She is an economist and a lawyer and an international consultant on foreign financing. For the first two and a half years of the Kufuor administration, she was a Special Adviser to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo. Her speciality was advising on foreign loans being sought by Ghana.
Following press reports that the Government of Ghana was spending excessively on her, Information Minister, Nana Akomea at a Press Conference held on 27th November 2003 stated as follows:
“Ms Gizelle Yajzi came to the attention of the Ministry of Finance as a lobbyist in the Gulf and Middle East region. She assisted a government delegation to Kuwait in December 2002 to secure a quick resolution of the rescheduling of Ghana’s debt of US$32 million owed to Kuwait and also in securing a US$600,000 grant from the Kuwait government for an agricultural feasibility project for the Accra Plains.
The expenditure on Ms. Yajzi were on the air fare and per diem for four days. Ms. Yajzi has therefore not been engaged as Special Adviser to the Minister and is not “running up bills that threaten to cause serious financial loss”.
Subsequent rumours linked Ms. Gizelle Yajzi in an amorous relationship with President Kufuor, and further rumours had it that a set of twins named John and Philip Kufuor had been produced as offsprings of the relationship.
Ms. Gizelle Yajzi in an earlier interview with Radio Gold denied any such relationship and insisted that she had not been pregnant in the last 18 years. The rumours however persist.
In the following interview, conducted by long distance telephone with Radio Gold’s Roland Acquah-Stevens from an undisclosed location, Ms. Gizelle Yajzi makes it clear that contrary to Nana Akomea’s assertion, she used to be an Adviser to the Minister of Finance and also gives her views on the US$300 million CNT loan that has generated so much controversy after Ghana Palaver had broken the story.
She is certain that either the loan is a scam or the Minister of Finance has made a mistake, or that the “deal” is not really a loan but a contract for the specific performance of certain contracts, in which case it is a kind of “supplier’s credit” agreement that should have been taken to Parliament, but not a loan agreement.
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Source: GhanaWeb
