Jeffrey Epprim Nyame, a blogger who published false news that caused panic bank withdrawals in the year 2022, has been sentenced to 30 days imprisonment.
Prosecutors said publication compelled dollar account holders to withdraw their money from the various banks.
Nyame was found guilty by an Accra Circuit Court presided over by Mr Isaac Addo at the end of the trial on a charge of publication of false news.
The court however acquitted and discharged Jeremiah Kobina Egyabeng, an IT professional, who was held on a charge of abetment.
Earlier, John Baptist Ayitse, a lawyer, who acted as a friend of the court, prayed the court not to hand down a custodial sentence on Nyame, saying the convict was young and he had learnt from his mistake.
Nyame also prayed the court to forgive him because he had learnt from the incident and he would not repeat the act.
The trial Judge said in handing the sentence, it took into consideration the plea for mitigation by the accused person and a lawyer who acted as a friend of the court for Nyame.
The Court described the offence as misdemeanor but noted the issue of publication of false news was of grave concern in the advent of social media.
It noted that there was the need to instill discipline and sanctity in accurate reporting of news.
Additionally, journalists were to be very cautious in their venture to break the news first.
Prosecution led by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Seth Frimpong earlier on narrated that the Police gathered intelligence on social media, indicating that on October 27, 2022, Nyame published an article on his news portal called reportghana.net captioned, “Dollar account holders to get cedi at BoG rate for bank withdrawal effective 31st Oct?” and shared same on various WhatApp platforms causing fear and panic among the general public.
Prosecution said during investigations, it was established that Egyebeng initially created the news portal for Nyame called reportghana.com in the year 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.
However, Egyabeng again created a similar new portal but this time changed the domain from “dot com” to “dotnet” and registered it as reportghana.net on February 11, 2022 to be able to use the same for publication of articles and happenings in Ghana.
After publishing the said false, Nyame then shared the publication on WhatApp group platforms including “reportghana 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 registered on the platform.
The prosecution said Nyame admitted to publishing the alleged false news but stated that he got the article from mynewsgh.com but the investigations established otherwise and confirmed Nyame as the author and publisher.
The court heard that Egyebeng admitted to the creation of the news portal managed and used by Nyame.
Prosecution said further investigations uncovered the involvement of other persons involved in the publication who were at large.
