Formal Responses By Auditees To Queries Raised Not Incorporated In Report Of December 31, 2009, GH¢425,938 (¢4.2bn Not ¢15bn) Allegedly Paid To "Unidentified Working Groups" Including "Media Executives" & "Editors Forum"!
A critical scrutiny of the 'Audit-Report on the Financial Activities of the Ministry of Information for the period January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2008', which has become a subject of huge public interest and stormy media debate, has revealed that nowhere in the said Report did the Auditors state that GH¢1.5m (¢15bn) of public funds was paid out to journalists by the Ministry of Information under the erstwhile NPP Administration led by Mr. J.A. Kufuor.
The 'factual' and 'accurate' picture painted by the Audit Report which is dated December 31, 2009 (per a transmittal letter from the Ag. Auditor-General, Mr. Richard Q. Quartey to the Chief of Staff, Office of the President), is as captured in the summary of significant findings and recommendations, specifically, paragraph 8 (ii) thus: "IMPROPERLY ACCOUNTED FOR PAYMENTS TOTALING GH¢425,838 (4.2BN) WERE MADE TO TEAMS WHOSE MEMBERSHIP COULD NOT BE IDENTIFIED AND WHOSE TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT WERE ALSO NOT KNOWN".
"We recommend that Hon. Stephen Asamoah Boateng who admitted engaging these people should be held responsible for the payments made to them", added the Auditors.
The Auditors further stated that Mr. Stephen Asamoah Boateng had engaged the services of certain individuals and teams to carry out media-related services for Government under the Communication Strategy Implementation Programme, and listed the teams as follows: "(i) Media Executives, (ii) Editors Forum, (iii) Media Monitoring, (iv) Matters Arising, (v) PRIM, (vi) BLOW, (vii) GRID, (viii) Rapid Response, (ix) First Responders".
"A TOTAL OF GH¢425,938 WAS SPENT ON THESE TEAMS. THIS EXPENDITURE INCLUDED ALLOWANCES AND TRAVEL EXPENSES PAID TO PEOPLE WHOSE IDENTITIES WERE NOT DISCLOSED", revealed the Auditors on paragraph 49 of the Report.
Two former Chef Directors of the Ministry of Information, Messrs Albert A. Ampong and Dominic A.Y. Sampong who were in office at the time the teams operated as well as other key staff, according to the Auditors, "could not provide us the meaning of the acronyms (PRIM, BLOW and GRID), the names of the team members and their terms of engagement".
Other key officers of the Ministry who were interviewed by the Audit Team, allegedly explained that "they first got to know the names of the teams from the former Minister, Mr. Stephen Asamoah Boateng and that certain unknown persons who were holding meetings at various times at the Ministry could be members of some of these teams. They indicated further that the Ministry did not have any record of their regular attendance to work and/or output".
The Auditors noted that the members and terms of engagement of groups such as "Editors Forum" and the "Media Executives" were only known to the then Minister of Information, Mr. Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, adding that "the Ministry's officials told us during our interviews that these groups operated under the cover of darkness during which time meetings were held with the Minister, his deputy, Hon. Frank Agyekum and other functionaries whose names appear in paragraph 49 under the topic 'Cash Management'".
According to the Auditors, there were two other teams, namely: the "First Responders" and "Rapid Response" whose terms of engagement were not available, and which were tasked to react to any negative media reportage.
"From our discussions with the Hon. Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, we were made to understand that allowances were paid to certain individuals to also defend Government programmes during media discussions", the Auditors claimed.
The Auditors said although Mr. Asamoah-Boateng had promised to provide them the terms of engagement of the team members, "AS AT THE TIME OF WRITING OUR REPORT HE COULD NOT PROVIDE THE NEEDED INFORMATION".
Underscoring their expectation that Stephen Asamoah-Boateng and Frank Agyekum, a former Deputy Minister of Information, as Chief Spending Officers should have known that payments made from the Consolidated Fund are governed by laws, regulations and other administrative instructions, the Auditors indicated their disapproval of the various payments to these teams and individuals and described them as "reckless and a wasteful use of State resources".
"We recommend that the two should be made to identify those individuals, the records of their work attendance and work actually performed; failure which they and their former Chief Directors should be held responsible for the payment of the total amount of GH¢425,938", concluded the Auditors on paragraph 54 of their December 31, 2009 Audit Report.
Meanwhile, Mr. Asamoah-Boateng, in a reply dated February 3, 2010 to a letter dated January 26, 2010 signed by Mr. V.X.K. Senaya, Ag. Chief Director of the Ministry of Information (for the Minister), requesting him (Asamoah-Boateng) "to respond to issues raised about the formation of unidentified working groups and payment of sums of money to same", indicated that the formation of the working groups pre-dated his appointment at the Ministry and that he was only "implementing Government's Communication Strategy Programme that had been accepted at Cabinet meeting sometime in 2006".
Mr. Senaya emphasized that Mr. Asamoah-Boateng's response was to "ENABLE THE HON. MINISTER OF INFORMATION SUBMIT A FORMAL RESPONSE TO THE AUDIT SERVICE MANAGEMENT LETTER ON THE ACCOUNTS OF THE MINISTRY".
Mr. Asamoah-Boateng revealed that on assumption of office at the Ministry, he only reactivated the Public Relations and Information Management (PRIM) and the Monitoring Groups that were not functioning satisfactorily. He insisted that the groups did not operate clandestinely as the Audit Report had suggested.
The operations of the groups, he insisted, were discussed at Management meetings. He attached documentary proof (minutes of Management meetings) and underscored that he had ensured that his Secretariat provided these two groups with terms of their engagement, documentary evidence of which he attached to his February 3, 2010 response to the Ag. Director of the Ministry of Information's January 26, 2010 letter of request.
On the crucial issue of unauthorised payments to unidentified groups, Asamoah-Boateng said: "I AM INFORMED THAT THE TOTAL PAYMENTS OF GH¢425,938 MADE TO THEM OVER THE PERIOD WERE PROPERLY SIGNED FOR BY THE INDIVIDUAL RECIPIENTS. THE ACCOUNTS OFFICE SHOULD BE ABLE TO LOCATE THESE SIGNED DOCUMENTS IN THEIR RECORD FILES".
He continued: "Since I am not in any capacity to access the Ministry's files at this moment, I am afraid I am unable to identify these individuals. As payments to these teams were made to deliver on a Cabinet approved programme, I do not think the description of 'reckless and a wasteful use of State resources' is appropriate. In anycase I was not a Spending Officer. I did not handle payments, as Payment Vouchers will show. As to their work attendance and performance, I hereby attach copies for your attention".
Mr. Asamoah-Boateng also reminded the Ag. Chief Director of Information that almost all the queries raised in the audit report formed part of his handing over notes which were passed on to the Government's Transition Team, and expressed surprise that the Auditors could not access or find the relevant documents to facilitate their audit investigations.
"This, to me, is surprising. There may be some lapses in the Civil Service of maintaining proper and adequate documentation but I believe that the Accounts Office at the Ministry and the Cabinet Secretariat should hold the records for the audit team to check. Also, I trust that our minute-taker, Ms. Comfort Kyeremeh, will make minutes of our Management meetings available to you. This will show that queries raised by the audit team were openly subjected to Management discussion and decisions made thereof, before they were implemented", articulated Mr. Asamoah-Boateng.
Mr. Asamoah-Boateng also took issues with the process and procedure adopted by the audit team in its investigations, saying that his version or account of events had not been fully captured and that the process lacked fairness. He recalled that he was invited to meet an audit team at the conference room of the Audit Service on Thursday, 10 September, 2009 in what he described as an "entrance Conference".
He noted that the meeting talked more about generalities of his role at the Ministry, and touched on some few questions pertaining to the engagement of the "services of certain individuals and teams to carry out media-related services for Government under the Communication Strategy Programme".
He recalled that the audit team took minutes of the September 10, 2009 "entrance conference" and noted that he had not been provided with a verbal or written observation of the outcome to enable him cross-check whether his responses had been captured accurately, adding that the "spoken" English language could be misrepresented when put in writing.
"Therefore, I expected to have the opportunity to comment on the outcome of this one, and only contact that I have had with the audit team. In fact, there are certain statements attributed to me in the said report that I know nothing about", he pointed out.
"WITH SUCH A SCENARIO, I CAN ONLY PRAY AND HOPE THAT THIS AUDIT EXERCISE IS NOT A MANIPULATION BY SOMEONE TO ACHIEVE A POLITICAL AIM. I HOPE AND PRAY THAT MY VERSION WILL HAVE A PLACE IN THE MINDS OF THE AUTHORITIES WHO ARE YET TO SEE YOUR 'FORMAL RESPONSE' AS STATED IN YOUR LETTER", asserted Asamoah-Boateng.
Similar letters dated January 26, 2010 and all signed by Mr. V.X.K. Senaya, the Ag. Chief Director of the Ministry of Information (for the Minister), were dispatched to Mr. Frank Agyekum, former Deputy Minister of Information, Oboshie Sai Coffie, former Minister of Information, Dr. A. Akoto Osei, former Minister of State, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Prof. George Gyan-Baffour, former Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and Mr. Kwabena Adjei-Mensah, Director of Budget, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.
They were all, as required of Mr. Asamoah-Boateng, to "SUBMIT A REPORT TO THIS MINISTRY NOT LATER THAN 29 JANUARY, 2010 TO ENABLE THE HON. MINISTER OF INFORMATION SUBMIT A FORMAL RESPONSE TO THE AUDIT SERVICE MANAGEMENT LETTER ON THE ACCOUNTS OF THE MINISTRY".
Significantly, none of the formal responses provided by the "respondents/auditees" such as Asamoah-Boateng, Frank Agyekum, Akoto Osei, Gyan Baffour, Adjei-Mensah, has been captured in the December 31, 2009 Audit Report which has been the basis of the recent newspaper reports and radio debate, OBVIOUSLY BECAUSE THE FORMAL REQUESTS FROM THE AG. CHIEF DIRECTOR OF THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION WERE CONTAINED IN LETTERS DATED JANUARY 26, 2010, TWENTY-SIX (26) CLEAR DAYS AFTER DECEMBER 31, 2009, THE DATE OF THE AUDIT REPORT APPARENTLY INTERCEPTED BY SECTIONS OF THE MEDIA.
Published elsewhere in today's edition of The New Crusading GUIDE, is the formal response of Dr. Akoto Osei. Stay tuned for the responses of Prof. Gyan Baffour and Mr. Kwabena Adjei-Mensah and others in subsequent editions of The New Crusading GUIDE.
"OSEI's FORMAL RESPONSE NOT CAPTURED BY AUDIT REPORT"
Hon. Anthony Akoto Osei, former Minister of State, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning .Auditor General's Recommendations As Contained In Paragraph 48 Were 'Made Out Of A Complete Ignorance Of The Facts' - He Charges
Published below is the full text of the formal response of Mr. Anthony Akoto Osei, former Minister of State, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, to a letter from the Ag. Director of the Ministry of Information, Mr. V.X.K. Senaya, requesting him (Akoto Osei) "to respond to issues raised about the GH¢1,500,000 from the disbursement of Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) Account and also the GH¢1,500,000 from the HIPC Fund disbursements account" and "submit a report to this Ministry not later than 29 January, 2010, to enable the Hon. Minister of Information submit a formal response to the Audit Service Management letter on the accounts of the Ministry".
Mr. Senaya's letter dated January 26, 2010, was received by Dr. Akoto Osei on February 3, 2010. The latter's response is dated February 4, 2010. The Audit Report which has become the basis for public discourse is dated December 31, 2009.
Please read on and stay tuned for more.
The Acting Chief Director Ministry of Information Accra
Dear Madam/Sir
I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated January 26 regarding the Special Audit Report of the Financial Activities of the Ministry of Information for the period, January 2007 to 31 January 2008.
In that letter I am being requested to respond to certain issues so your Ministry can send its response to the Auditor General as required by section 29 of the Audit Service Act 584.
First, I wish to state that I only received my letter on February 3 when I returned to Parliament after being out of Accra for over a week, hence my lateness in replying.
Secondly, I note that with respect to my particular case, the relevant paragraphs from the Audit report are paragraphs 37 through 48. Consequently my reply will focus on the relevant issues in these paragraphs.
In particular, my understanding is that the auditors' recommendations hinge on paragraph 38, which states that "The modalities for the disbursement of the MDRI funds are agreed with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) and are incorporated into the national budget which is approved by Parliament".
I want to put it on record that NO SUCH AGREEMENT EXIST between the Government of Ghana and these International Financial Institutions (IFIs). Perhaps a little information on the modalities of MDRI is in order here.
Debt relief from the MDRI initiative became effective after Ghana reached the completion of the Enhanced HIPC initiative. At that time the two most important principles that informed the use of the resources were (1) that the relief was irrevocable and (2) that The Government of Ghana was the Sole Determinant Of The How The Resources Were To Be Used.
The practical application of these principles in the Ghanaian context is that the EXECUTIVE would RECOMMEND how the resources were to be used either through a regular or supplementary budget and Parliament as required by our Constitution would APPROVE OR DISAPPROVE of these recommendations.
A look at all budgets, regular or supplementary, since the completion point to date, will confirm this. In this regard the 2008 budget that was dully approved by Parliament in December 2007 was no exception. The recommendations submitted by the executive were duly approved by Parliament. This fact can be confirmed by looking at the Appropriations Act of 2008.
I wish to submit that once Parliament had duly approved of the recommendations any appropriate official of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning could have released monies from the MDRI account. In 2008 as a Minister of State in the Ministry, I was properly authorized to release those monies. AS FURTHER CONFIRMATION OF THE APPLICATION OF THESE PRINCIPLES, THE AUDITORS MAY WISH TO NOTE THAT THE CURRENT MINISTER OF FINANCE AND ECONOMIC PLANNING HAS RELIGIOUSLY MADE USE OF THESE PRINCIPLES IN THE 2009 AND 2010 BUDGET STATEMENTS PRESENTED TO AND APPROVED BY PARLIAMENT.
It is clear from the foregoing that the recommendations of the Auditor-General as contained in paragraph 48, to wit "WE CONSEQUENTLY RECOMMEND THAT THE TWO FORMER DEPUTY MINISTERS AND THE DIRECTOR OF BUDGET SHOULD BE HELD RESPONSIBLE AND APPROPRIATELY SANCTIONED ." WERE MADE OUT OF A COMPLETE IGNORANCE OF THE FACTS. I HAVE REACHED THIS CONCLUSION BECAUSE OF THE RESPECT I HAVE FOR THAT OFFICE AND CONSEQUENTLY I DO NOT WISH TO ASSIGN ANY OTHER MOTIVES.
This notwithstanding, since these recommendations have the potential of destroying the integrity of the persons involved, I wish to strongly request that the Auditor-General does the proper and fair thing by correcting the facts and amending the appropriate sections of his draft report.
I wish to take the liberty of sending a copy of my response to the Auditor-General, just in case your response to him does not get there on time for the requisite amendments to be made to the report.
I end here hoping that your Ministry and the Auditor-General's office will treat this matter with the urgency that it deserves. If I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to let me know.
Sincerely yours,
Anthony Akoto Osei (Ph.D)
M.P OLD TAFO
February 4, 2010
