{"id":14370,"date":"2014-04-19T12:42:39","date_gmt":"2014-04-19T12:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=14370"},"modified":"2014-04-19T12:44:23","modified_gmt":"2014-04-19T12:44:23","slug":"bankswitch-judgment-debt-take-me-to-court-if-you-think-im-guilty-akoto-osei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=14370","title":{"rendered":"Bankswitch judgment debt: take me to court if you think I&#8217;m guilty  &#8211; Akoto Osei"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Minister of State at the finance ministry , Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei has challenged anyone who thinks he is guilty and played a role in the 197 million dollar judgment debt awarded against the state in its negotiation with IT Firm, Bankswitch Ghana Limited to proceed to court.<\/p>\n<p>&#8221;It&#8217;s unfortunate that we&#8217;ve allowed this [to get this way]; if they think I have done something wrong, they should take me to court,&#8221; he said on Accra based Joy FM&#8217;s News File Programme.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Akoto Osei was speaking on issues pertaining to the state signing a contract with Bankswitch Ghana Limited.<\/p>\n<p>According to him the matter between Bankswitch has been going on since 2005, &#8221;&#8230;and this mystery [abrogation of contract with Bankswitch] in 2010 is what has caused the judgment debt.<\/p>\n<p>He also explained that in his view the actions by the government [NDC] was avoidable.<\/p>\n<p>The former minister of state also noted that all the Attorney Generals since 2009 failed\u00a0 to contact him on the issue before advancing to abrogate the contract with Bankswitch.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Akoto Osei also denied allegations that he held shares in Bankswitch Ghana Limited.<\/p>\n<p>The Ministry of Finance entered into an agreement with the company for the provision of a customers&#8217; valuation software for the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, to help with revenue mobilization.<\/p>\n<p>Bankswitch Ghana Limited sued the government of Ghana at The Hague, Netherlands for wrongfully abrogating a contract signed with the Finance Ministry to provide services.<\/p>\n<p>Bankswitch Ghana Limited requested the court to award it 853 million cedis for the illegal termination of a contract it signed with the government in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>But the court awarded damages amounting to 197.4 million cedis to Bankswitch Ghana.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, deputy Minister of Information and Media Relations, Ibrahim <em>Murtala Mohammed<\/em> revealed on the programme that government will challenge the case and the amount.<\/p>\n<p>&#8221;&#8230;In anycase, this case is being challenged, government is not going to lie low; government will not just pay,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By: Evans Effah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Minister of State at the finance ministry , Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei has challenged anyone who thinks he is guilty and played a role in the 197 million dollar judgment debt awarded against the state in its negotiation with IT Firm, Bankswitch Ghana Limited to proceed to court. &#8221;It&#8217;s unfortunate that we&#8217;ve allowed this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":5364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[43,38],"class_list":["post-14370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}