The office of former President Kufuor has described as “very irresponsible” Tsatsu Tsikata’s description of Mr. Kufuor as a debt collector on behalf of French Bank Societe Generale.

The Former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Tsatsu Tsikata, told the Judgment Debt Commission that former President John Kufuor was virtually a “debt collector” for Societe Generale as far as the Corporation's indebtedness to the Bank was concerned.

He said “…Certain steps had been taken completely outside the framework of the GNPC law in terms of how it was alleged that the Government had decided that Societe Generale should be paid certain monies and the ways in which those monies were paid and so on because it looked as if rather unusually, the President of the Republic himself was becoming the debt collector for Societe Generale”.

Mr. Tsikata, who was testifying about GNPC’s indebtedness to Societe Generale, which allegedly compelled the selling of its drillship to defray the debt, also told the Commission that: “As of December 2000 when I left GNPC, there was neither a judgment nor a judgment debt against the GNPC or Government of Ghana”.

However, in a reaction, Mr. Frank Agyekum, spokesperson of former President Kufuor stated that the former president acted in the interest of the nation and cannot be impugned for any wrongdoing.

“So far as I am concerned President Kufuor did what he did in the interest of the nation…and it is very irresponsible to call him names,” Mr. Agyekum said on Radio XYZ’s Strict Proof Tuesday.

Mr. Agyekum added that it is wrong for Tsatsu Tsikata to assume the role of a judge and pass judgment when the case is still being heard by the sole commissioner.