<<Print>>

The Judgement Debt Commission (JDC) will end its public hearing on Thursday, November 6, 2014, the Sole Commissioner, Mr Justice Apau, has announced. Speaking before the start of Monday�s sitting, Justice Apau said after the public sitting, the commission would retire to prepare its final report which would be submitted to President John Dramani Mahama. He had earlier announced that the commission would end its sitting at the end of October, 2014. Justice Apau explained that the postponement of the sitting was necessitated by the pendency of some cases before the commission. The Sole Commissioner said the commission continued to receive petitions, but could not delve into them. While indicating that some of the petitions had serious questions, he said the commission would capture their essence in its final report. The commission was set up by President John Dramani Mahama in 2012, to look into judgement debt payments from 1992. Public sittings The commission began its public sitting on November 28, 2012 at the Old Parliament House in Accra. After more than a year of sitting at that venue, fire gutted the building in December, 2013. Most of the documents that the commission had accumulated during the period were destroyed by the fire. Following the fire and its effects, the commission had to suspend sitting for some months and was relocated to the current venue in Accra in July, 2014. Prominent cases before the commission Prominent personalities, including a former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, a former Energy Minister under the Kufuor administration, Mr Albert Kan-Dapaah, and his deputy, Mr K.T. Hammond, appeared before the commission. Nana Konadu was at the commission to answer questions relating to the payment of GH�4.9 million compensation to Calf Cocoa International Ghana Limited. The company was a joint venture between Caridem Development Ghana Limited and the Chinese International Company for Agriculture and Fisheries. One of the cases that made waves at the commission was the sale of a drill ship belonging to the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC). Messrs Kan-Dapaah and Hammond appeared before the commission to answer questions about their involvement in the sale of the ship. The GNPC drill ship, Discoverer 511, was sold to pay off a $19.5 million judgement debt owed to French multinational bank, Societe General. What next? In an interview with the Daily Graphic three weeks ago, counsel of the commission, Mr Dometi Kofi Sokpor, said at the end of the commission�s work, it would make some recommendations to the President for his consideration and possible implementation. For instance, he said, the commission would recommend measures to prevent the state from getting embroiled in judgement debts or paying judgement debts to any organisation or individual. Mr Sokpor was not specific on the retrieval of money to the state but indicated that the issue of retrieval would be included in the commission�s report.