The PPP said yesterday that New York-based businessman Ed Ahmad who was charged by the US FBI with mortgage fraud has not made any financial contributions to the PPP/C’s 2011 political campaign “nor can he be considered in any way part of the PPP structure or the PPP/C government”.
The statement came following media reports on Ahmad’s arrest on Friday in New York and his subsequent release on a bond of US$2.5 million and responded in particular to a report that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the online publication Demerara Waves.
“The People’s Progressive Party has once again noticed that the Demerara Waves website has now openly joined ranks with the pro-opposition media in their continuing onslaught against the PPP and PPP/C government by spreading falsehoods and misinformation,” the PPP said.
“The latest case in point regards its story captioned `PPP associate ensnared in New York straw mortgage deals; being electronically monitored’, which portrays New York-based Guyanese Ed Ahmad as a financier and operative of the PPP. Similar suggestions were also made by the ‘anti-PPP’ publications Kaieteur and Stabroek News.
“The nasty attempts to link Ahmad’s activities with the PPP or to suggest that he is a financier of the PPP are nothing but absolute lies.
“While we can excuse the Kaieteur News, whose editor Adam Harris is the former editor of the now defunct PNC’s New Nation and the Stabroek News which has clearly made its anti-PPP/C credentials known; the attempts by the Demerara Waves to portray itself as balanced has been dislodged by this latest piece of mischievous reporting.
“The PPP wishes to make it absolutely clear that Ahmad has not made any financial contributions to the PPP/C’s 2011 political campaign nor can he be considered in any way part of the PPP structure or the PPP/C government.
“The party calls on all to note that Kaieteur News and Stabroek News have now officially enlisted the Demerara Waves into their pro-opposition media fold”, the statement read.
The Stabroek News report pointed out that Ahmad had set up a hardware business at the Industrial Site premises of the Mirror newspaper and that he had cultivated close ties with several members of the PPP/C. The report did not suggest that Ahmad was a financier and operative of the PPP as contended in the statement. (See story on Page 8)
