The Auditor-General (A-G) has cited nineteen (19) former and current judges of Ghana’s superior courts for acquiring state vehicles in contravention of Regulation 158 of the Public Financial Management Regulations 2019 (L.I. 2378).
The regulation states that the principal spending officer of a covered entity shall obtain written approval of the Minister for the transfer, exchange, sale, donation, contribution in kind, trust and any other disposal of any vehicle.
The A-G’s report states that 19 vehicles were “auctioned by the Service for GH¢1,023,507.96 without approval from the Minister of Finance” and recommended that the auction should be annulled.
“In the absence of approval from the Minister for Finance, we recommended that the auction should be nullified, and the vehicles recovered.”
But social commentator, Bernard Allotey Jacobs, has fired salvoes at the A-G for taking on the judges.
According to him, what the A-G did is not good, stressing “in every rule, there are exception.”
Claiming the A-G failed to conduct himself appropriately in respect of this issue, he asked; “How can the Auditor-General do that? . . . Have you written to the Judges asking them of their opinion on the issue of how these Land Cruisers were sold to them?
“The reason is that all the previous administrations auction them. It’s like it is now become different that they slip it or give it to the press to publish without even asking for the consent of the Judges. It is not fine! . . . We are not doing this country well!!”, he asserted.
“You didn’t do well at all,” he rebuked the A-G.
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