Editor-in-Chief of The Crusading Guide newspaper, Kweku Baako Jnr, has suggested the Judgment Debt Commission failed to ask significant questions of former head of the Ghana National Petroleum Commission (GNPC), Tsatsu Tsikata.

Providing documents including memos, expert testimonies and minutes of meetings of GNPC, Mr Baako said pertinent questions were omitted by the Commission when Mr Tsikata appeared before it last week.

The French Bank sued GNPC in a London court following a failed contract and received default judgment of the $47 million, but the previous Kufuor administration, through negotiations, reduced the money to $19.5 million.Of the $24Million earned from the sale of the GNPC drill ship, $19.5Million was used to pay off a default judgment debt slapped against the GNPC in favour of Societe Generale by an English Court. 

However, $3.5Million of the amount is still unaccounted for,setting off an inquiry into the whereabout of the money.

A disappointed Kweku Baako insisted the Commission should have asked Mr Tsikata whether it was justifiable for Societe General to claim 40 million dollars in debts from GNPC.

Speaking on current affairs program Newsfile over the weekend, Mr Baako produced copies of Board minutes of GNPC in which Mr Tsikata defended a 40 million debt claim by Societe Generale.

Quoting copiously from the December 16,1998 minutes of the Board meeting, Baako said Tsikata also defended fully the hedging policy the corporation entered into with the French Bank Societe General which has now become the basis of a judgement debt scandal in the country.

"He did not seek to interrogate, if indeed that claim of forty million made by SG was justified or not and how it came about", said Mr Baako.

He added although research done by a Chicago-based expert on the GNPC-SG deal indicated that SG had acted negligently, the Commission failed to ask relevant questions in that regard.

He said the Commission could have probed the elements that went into the negligence advice.