The trial of a blogger and an Information Technology (IT) professional whose action resulted in panic bank withdrawals by dollar account holders, has begun before an Accra Circuit Court with the prosecution calling its first witness.
The two, Jeffrey Eppirim Nyame, blogger and Jeremiah Kobina Egyebeng, an IT professional, were arrested by the police following investigations into a report made by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) about the false publication which led many dollar account holders to panic-withdraw their monies.
The publication complained about was under the headline ‘Dollar account holders to get cedi at BoG rate for bank withdrawals effective 31st Oct?’ which sought to create the impression that dollar account holders were going to get the cedi equivalent of their monies.
Court documents indicate that the said article was shared on various WhatsApp groups and social media platforms, causing fear and panic among the general public.
Jeffrey Eppirim Nyame has been charged with one count of publication of false news, while Jeremiah Kobina Egyebeng was charged with one count of abetment.
They all pleaded not guilty and were admitted to bail of GH¢20,000 each with two sureties each.
First Witness
The prosecution yesterday called Police Detective Sergeant Nach Kyeremeh of the Cybercrime Unit of the Ghana Police Service as its first witness, and he had been telling the court about how the two were arrested.
The witness told the court that it was Cyber Security Patrol team who saw the article on the internet, and the Bank of Ghana also made a verbal communication on the activities of the accused persons which had caused panic withdrawal of customers at various banks.
He said the police investigated the original author of the article, and the accused persons were asked to lead the police to the source of their story, but they failed to do so.
Answering questions under cross-examination by Gregory Kwadwo Asiedu, counsel for the accused, Sergeant Kyeremeh denied that the police targeted the accused persons, leaving the original source of the story.
The court, presided over by Isaac Addo, adjourned the case to October 18, 2023, for continuation.
Original Complaint
The brief facts presented by Chief Inspector Richard Amoah, indicated that the police gathered cyber intelligence on social media indicating that on October 27, 2022, Jeffery Nyame published an article on his news portal reportghana.net captioned, “Dollar account holders to get cedi at BoG rate for bank withdrawals effective 31st Oct?” and shared same on various WhatsApp groups and social media platforms, causing fear and panic among the general public.
It said investigations established that Jeremiah Egyebeng initially created reportghana.com for Nyame in 2019, which was used for the publication of similar articles, but was closed down by Google for violating their community standard due to complaints received from users.
The prosecutor said Egyebeng, on February 11, 2022, however created a similar news portal, but this time changed the domain from “dot com” to “dot net” and registered it as reportghana.net to be able to use same for publication of articles and happenings in Ghana.
“After publishing the said false news, Nyame then shared the publication on WhatsApp group platforms including “report ghana news feed 1,” “reportghana news feed 2,” “reportghana news feed 3″ with over 160 active members where he was the administrator, with his personal telephone numbers 0551993013 and 0574144388 registered on the platform,” Chief Inspector Amoah added.
He further stated that Nyame admitted to publishing the alleged false news but stated that he got the article from mynewsgh.com, a claim that turned out to be false after investigations.
Jeremiah Egyebeng, on the other hand, admitted to the creation of the news portal managed and used by Nyame.
The prosecutor said further investigation uncovered the involvement of other persons involved in the publication, who were currently at large and efforts underway to arrest them.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak