The Ghanaian Chronicle says it has gathered that the 'slushfund' set up by the past NDC government at the Ashiagbor-owned Metropolitan and Allied Bank (MAB) was done way back in 1997 on January 23 on the orders of the Chief of Staff, the controversial Nana Ato Dadzie.

This followed a directive from Bank of Ghana (BOG) that all government accounts should move from the private and state- owned banks and transferred to the Central Bank.

Officials close to the BOG confirmed that until the paper broke the story about the End of Service Benefits (ESBs) and revealed that MAB was the conduit, BOG did not even know that any such account existed.

It was only after the news report that Banking Supervision Department traced the account and realised that it exists and that MAB did not comply with the directive ostensibly because it would have aborted the possible objective of pulling off such secret pay outs.

Curiously the boss of the bank, Ashiagbor, has been putting out advertisements in the newspapers explaining away the circumstances under which the ESB payments were made despite orders from Mr Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, Chief of staff, that the signatories to the government accounts had changed and that their cheques should not be honoured. The MAB advertorials appear to be thin on truth.

In a directly related account, it has been established that the former President, Flt. Lt. J.J. Rawlings, ex-Veep Atta Mills and his men overpaid themselves by 2.28 billion cedis using basic salaries which were higher for the computation of their leave and end of service benefits.

Salary levels of November 2000 were used in working out pay throughout the four years. As much as 980 million cedis were paid to those who were not even qualified by the NDC Government's own formulae to receive the sums.

Chronicle also learnt that Mr Ato Dadzie handled the transactions but failed to make the mandatory income tax deductions.