The Supreme Court of Ghana on Thursday, April 21, 2016 ordered two banks in Accra to use all the money in Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome’s account to defray the controversial Ghc51.2 million judgment debt he owes the state.
Though, the order by the Supreme Court is commendable, we think there is still something wrong, which if not checked, will not deter people in future from defrauding the state.
As at now we do not know how much interest Mr. Woyome is paying on the money he fraudulently collected from the state, a situation we believe is not good for our growing democracy, if we mean as a country to fight corruption.
Granted that the Ghc51.2 million was a loan facility that Mr. Woyome took from a bank, since 2009 he received the money till today would he not have paid the principal money with interest?
And if it so then the question we want to ask is: Why has he not been asked to pay interest on the money?
If he is paying interest, how much is he paying including all other individuals and organisations who also, in one way or the other, received money from the state through dubious means?
For instance, we demand to know how much interest Waterville, Isofoton, Rlg, Subah Info solutions, Smartty among others paid as interest or are paying?
In fact it is our right as Ghanaians since the money belongs to the state to know how much interest all these monies must have accrued in all these years.
What we need to understand is that Ghana is not a charitable organisation where it can dole out money to few individuals anyhow at the detriment of the nation.
Indeed it is the responsibility of government to ensure that our national purse is judiciously managed and not to dissipate it anyhow.
It is for this reason that Today thinks asking people including Mr. Woyome to pay their debts to the state without interest is worrying and also not a good precedent.
<<Print>>