Payment of double salaries not a crime - Dr. Dominic Ayine

He said this in response to allegations by the former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu that the government bargained with NDC MPs on their double salaries saga to approve ministers.

He said, “This is a matter of an employer overpaying an employee. Even in the private sector it happens, where the account department miscalculate the remuneration that is due to a person. None of the persons against whom the allegation has been made actively took any step to get paid the double salary.

“Secondly, none of them was in the position to approve payment for them either by way of getting vouchers or signing off that payment be made. Ministers don’t have that power, the principal spending officers of any ministry, department and agency are the chief directors and so ministers were never involved in anyway in approving their salaries.”

He added “For instance, if the system is set up in such a way that you are told that as a parliamentarian you will be paid from parliament, then as a minister you will he paid a top up from the ministry and the person who is supposed to pay you the top up then pays something equivalent to your salary. Unless you are somebody who monitors your account on a monthly basis to see what is going on there, you will assume that that is the top up that has been paid. So people like me who came from private practice, to be honest with you, these public sectors salaries this is nothing that was going into my account.

“So for me I wasn’t even oblivious of any such payment until the matter came up.

“This is a matter that under the Public Financial Management Act and its regulations as well as the former Financial Administration Act and its regulation, there are provisions for recovery of overpayments of emoluments to public officers, it is not a crime.

Dominic Akuritinga Ayine ( Bolgatanga East) ece-auto-gen

“If for instance somebody who works in the environmental protection agency or someone who works in a public service commission has been overpaid the Police cannot arrest that person and begin to talk about prosecuting them for stealing. For stealing to take place you, must have dishonestly appropriated something that did not belong to you. Where is the dishonest appropriation if someone paid it to you and you, as an employee, spend the money without knowing that this is an overpayment?”

Martin Amidu claims the action of the president i the matter was for “political expediency”. In his latest epistle which reports to a media report that he took over the prosecution of the scandal but did nothing before resigning his post, the Mr. Amidu refuted the claims, counterclaiming it was the interference of the president that foiled prosecutions.

“The credible information I received on the case is and was that the then Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions had both perused the case docket and had come to the conclusion that charges be filed against some of the suspects for prosecution. The Attorney General was instructed not to do so by the President who unconstitutionally usurped the investigatory and prosecutorial constitutional authority of the Attorney General on grounds of political expediency of having the suspects agreeable to play ball in Parliament for the Government”, he said.