NMC Officials Implicated in Loss Of ?50 Million

A deputy Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission, Joseph Dotey, and two others have been implicated in the loss of over 50 million cedis. The money was part of allowances for members of the Commission serving on a monitoring team of the National Reconciliation process. The two others are Alex Bannerman, the deputy Executive Secretary in charge of operations and Mustapha Salifu, the Accountant.

The new chairman of the Media Commission, Wilson Atta-Ansah, told JOY FM that his predecessor, Nutifafa Kuenyehia, detected the irregularities when some members of the team tried to collect their allowances. This prompted the Commission to charge the co-coordinator of the project to account for monies disbursed so far, during which the missing funds were detected. .

The three officials are yet to give their official response to the commission on the allegations. However, the Accountant, Mustapha Salifu, has denied any wrongdoing. He told JOY FM in an interview that he only took instructions from Mr. Dotey, who is also the coordinator of the programme.

Mustapha Salifu said he had not responded to letters from both the present and past chairmen of the Commission, because he expected Mr Dotey to answer questions on the account.

''I don’t have any control, I can’t do anything on my own. I’m leaving it for now, for the project co-coordinator because … whatever I did was by his approval and authority. So if I’m being penalized, I think he should react - I cannot react'', the Accountant noted.

Efforts to reach Mr Dotey for his comments proved futile.

Meanwhile the Commission has hired an independent auditor to review the accounts of the monitoring project, which is funded by the UNDP through the National Governance Programme.