GBC ‘Iron’ Boss in trouble

- NMC announces her fate on Friday

The National Media Commission (NMC) is in a dilemma whether to immediately dismiss the Director of Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), Ms Eva Lokko or to hold on for the full report of investigations that is being conducted by the Auditor-General. In a marathon meeting held by the Commission yesterday, some members suggested that she should proceed on leave instead of giving her outright dismissal for investigations to proceed.

Some members argued that the continuous stay of Ms Lokko would prompt mayhem at the workers' front since they had called for her interdiction in order to relieve them of numerous harassments and victimization.

It was finally agreed that the Commission would come out publicly on Friday to announce that Ms Lokko proceeded on compulsory leave, since by then it would have received the report, which had already indicted her.

Meanwhile, the Director of Finance at GBC, Mr. Kofi Kye has been arrested by the police in connection with the fake cheques that were used to withdraw huge sums of money from the corporation's accounts at Bank of Ghana.

The paper also gathered that the Chairman of the board of GBC, Nana Kwabena Nketiah was summoned to appear before the NMC to answer questions pertaining to the board of the corporation and the implications of the continued presence of Ms Lokko.

All attempts to get the NMC to confirm or deny the story proved futile, but an NMC source close to The Chronicle told the paper at press time that the GBC boss was on her way out.

Workers of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) last Thursday at a durbar, called for the interdiction of their Director-General (DG), Ms Eva Lokko and the Director of Finance (DOF), Mr. Kofi Kye in order for an independent probe to be set to investigate the corporation.

The workers wanted investigations into the circumstances under which cheques were stolen and used to withdraw billions of cedis from the Bank of Ghana account of GBC by unidentified people, accusing Ms Lokko and Mr. Kye being behind dubious and fraudulent schemes being deployed to line some private pockets, at a time when the company's financial position was nothing to write home about.

Preliminary investigations by the Auditor-General's Department, into the finances of the GBC, had revealed that in only six months, ¢1.0369billion that was paid by one of its advertisers, Talent Advertisers, as advert time had gone into wrong pockets.

Chronicle gathered that this came to light after a team of auditors, tasked by the Auditor-General (AG) to carry out an investigative audit into allegations of malfeasance at the nation's premier broadcasting corporation, had sampled Talent Advertisers' accounts with the Corporation for only 6months of their transactions for 2004.

According to the investigations, $39,000 (¢358,800,000) that Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC) (Ashimolowo's church) paid and was supposed to be in GBC's account was located in an unknown account somewhere.

The Chronicle learnt the auditors have since retrieved the $39,000.