Gertrude Torkornoo
It has emerged that the suspended Chief Justice, Gertrude Torkornoo and some 49 judges at the superior and lower courts, have returned to the state various sums of monies erroneously paid to them by the Judicial Service as rent allowance.
Information gathered by DAILY GUIDE based on records from the Judicial Service, indicate that the 50 judges were paid a total of GH¢2,417,995.12 including tax, although they were living in official government properties.
The said payments were made between 2020 and 2022 when Justice Anin Yeboah (Rtd) was the Chief Justice.
The documents point out that when the discrepancies were detected, the judges were notified and they all refunded the monies paid to them.
Justice Torkornoo has been accused of receiving rent allowance while living in official government apartment during her tenure as Chief Justice.
The allegation forms part of what appears to be a deliberate attempt by some individuals to discredit her, as a five-member committee set up by President John Mahama to probe three petition calling for her removal from office has begun its work.
However, official documents from the Judicial Service sighted by this paper indicate that, Justice Torkornoo was not the only judge who was erroneously paid the said rent allowance, as 49 other judges, some of whom have been nominated by President Mahama to the Supreme Court, were also paid same.
The documents further point to the fact that the payments were made to her at a time when she was just a Justice of the Supreme Court, and not the Chief Justice.
The documents again disclose that the payment was an error on the part of the Judicial Service, and once the attention of the affected judges were drawn to it, they all refunded the entire money paid to them, including the tax component.
The Judicial Service, upon realising that it made another error in making the affected judges pay the tax component which amounted to GH¢435,918.41, returned same to the affected judges.
This meant that the Judicial Service was able to recover a total of GH¢1,982,076.71 as monies erroneously paid to the affected judges as rent allowance.
Error
The documents show that Justice Torkornoo was paid a total of GH¢152,768.40 plus tax, all of which she refunded to the Service once the error was detected.
The Judicial Service, however, returned a total of GH¢34,079.10, to her as the tax component, bringing the total amount erroneously paid and refunded to GH¢118,689.30.
Some of the judges who were also erroneously paid the rent allowance include Justice Janapare A. Bartels-Kodwo, a Justice of the Court of Appeal, who has been nominated to the Supreme Court by President John Mahama.
She received GH¢90,548.46 and later refunded the entire amount, and the Judicial Service returned GH¢21,218.08 to her as the tax component which she should not have repaid, just like Justice Torkornoo.
Two more Justices of the Court of Appeal, Justice Philip Bright Mensah and Justice Senyo Dzamefe, both of whom have also been nominated by President Mahama to the Supreme Court, were also erroneously paid the rent allowances.
Just like the other judges, they also returned the entire amount paid to them, and the Judicial Service reimbursed them for the tax component.
Justice Philip Bright Mensah was paid a total of GH¢105,870.40, while Justice Senyo Dzamefe was paid GH¢94,975.20.
Meanwhile, a source familiar with the erroneous payment has criticised the decision by some individuals to single out Justice Torkornoo for this error committed by the Judicial Service.
“Singling out Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey Torkornoo and accusing her of knowingly receiving rent allowance while living in an official residence is disingenuous, ridiculous, and an apparent attempt to discredit the Chief Justice of the Republic,” the source told Accra-based Asaase Radio on anonymity.
“These claims are a desperate attempt to smear the hard-earned reputation of the Chief Justice, who is probably the cleanest judge in Ghana,” a source at the Judicial Service familiar with these developments told Asaase News.
“If the claim that the Chief Justice genuinely received these rent allowance payments erred, then all the other 49 justices of the superior courts and judges of the lower courts also erred. Any call for the head of the Chief Justice based on this issue should mean that all the other judges who also received such payments should also be removed from office,” the source added.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak