Raymond Archer In More Trouble

Before he could be relieved of a recent contempt charge by an Accra High Court, the Editor-In-Chief of the Enquirer newspaper, Mr. Raymond Archer, faces yet another trouble with lawyer for former Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Dr. Akoto Osei.

The lawyers of Dr Akoto have given the embattled editor a seven day ultimatum to retract a story written about his client or face the law.

In a strongly worded rejoinder to the newspaper copied to Ghanaian Observer, Mr. Atta Akyea, Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa South and lawyer for Dr. Akoto Osei, noted that Mr. Archer has embarrassingly become the poor conveyor belt of the ignorant posture of the Author-General who does not know or is pretending not to know the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning's Treasury Single Account (TSA), with the central Bank started in 2000 and has intelligently been adopted by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.

The Enquirer newspaper in its 24th-25th edition alleged that per a Ministry of Information Audit, two ex-ministers in the Kufuor administration had been indicted over a ¢60 billion "chop- chop", mentioning Dr. Akoto Osei as none of the culprits.

"We act as lawyers for Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei who has instructed us to respond to your rather skewed publication of 24th -25th February 2010," Atta Akyea noted in the statement, stressing that "it is a matter of deep regret that your newspaper would not want to cultivate the sound professional culture of hearing the other side with the view to projecting a balanced view on the subject matter."

Citing portions of the 2010 budget to shed some light on the TSA, the Abuakwa South MP said since May 2009, a number of DMA accounts at the Bank of Ghana had been closed and a TSA opened to link all government account to ensure efficient monitoring and use of cash balances.

"The remaining accounts are now monitored on daily bases. This has resulted in cost saving, with idle cash balances reallocated to finance pressing expenditures, thereby reducing the need for new debt issuance during the weekly treasury bill auctions," he added.

"Liquidity management will be improved if the accounts of the statutory funds such as the GETFund and District Assembly Common Fund are maintained at the Bank of Ghana other than in the Commercial Banks as currently pertains. To this end, measures will be taken to consolidate all these balances at the Bank of Ghana."

According to the outspoken lawyer, the financial wisdom which has dawned is that it does not matter the movement of monies whether from Tema Oil Refinery Debt Recovery Account, Divestiture Implementation Committee Account, Multilateral Debt Relieve Initiative Account and HIPIC Account, the system ultimately balanced itself.

He insisted that in the circumstances, "we demand a prominent publication of this rejoinder seven clear days on receipt of this letter."