Re: Wereko-Brobby cited for awarding ¢2.9m contract illegally

This is a rejoinder sent to us by the chief executive of the defunct Ghana@50 Secretariat, Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, to our story of Saturday, the 4th of July 2015. The story is titled "Wereko-Brobby cited for awarding ¢2.9m contract illegally" and was based on the report of the Judgment Debt Commission. The facts as contained in the story which can be accessed here , reflect exactly what is captured in the authentic public document.

Please read below an unedited version of Dr. Wereko-Brobby rejoinder:

I have read your headline report of the above title in today's edition of myjoyonline

The source of the report is supposedly "a copy of the commission’s report intercepted by Joy News..............."

I am very surprised that a news organisation with the reputation that you have should rely on and give so much prominence and publicity to an "intercepted report" which even Government Minister's have refused to comment on until its official publication and issuance of an accompanying White Paper.

Be that as it may, I will not seek to guess your rationale to rush to press even in the face of the obvious professional requirement for you to ascertain your intercepted facts ahead of publication. For now, my position is that I treat your report as the corrupted fiction of an intercepted copy of the official report of the Judgement Debt Report

But I wish to state the following verifiable facts about my contacts with the Commission:

1. I appeared personally before the Commission in the company of my lawyer Akoto-Ampaw;

2. My appearance was covered live by GBC Television and a myriad of media organisations including Joy News

3. I presented both a written and verbal reports and subjected myself to cross-examination by both the Sole Commissioner and Counsel for the Commission

4. At no point of my encounter with the Commission was the subject matter of your report raised in testimony or cross-examination

5. The departing words of the Commissioner when i Left were: "We will come back to you if we need anything more..." Suffice it to say, I was never summoned again, nor asked to provide further and better particulars

6. The content of your report is patently false and a figment of somebody's imagination attributing it to Justice Apau will be impugning his otherwise unblemished reputation

7. Your reputable news organisation and the whole of Ghana is conversant with the proceedings, report and following attempts to criminalize my stewardship of the celebrations. You are also fully conversant with the fact that the report of the Ghana@50 Commission did not make the finding you have reported on and indeed I was acquitted and discharged in a Curt of Competent Jurisdiction, a fact that I would have urged u to act with some caution and not regurgigate such bile untruths from a supposedly "intercepted" fiction masquerading as an official report

8. All I want to say on The Margins story is that it is well documented and known by those who ought to have acted circumspectly to avoid the state having to purportedly pay a Judgement Debt.

If and when your so-called "intercepted" account makes it in the official Report of the Judgement Debt Commission, you can be sure that I would asking Justic Apau to confirm that he indeed s the author of the libel against me and indeed asking him to prove his facts and conclusions in legal proceedings

For now. I want this rejoinder published with the same prominence on myjoyonline and all the other platforms on which you have given so much airing to this falsehood

Thank you very much
Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby
(Chief Executive of the defunct Ghana@50 Secretariat