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The Ghanaian Lens can authoritatively report that Mrs. Marian Barnor was the single most obstructive obstacle to E&P gaining access to the Afrexim sixty million United States dollars facility in 2011. Indeed, The Ghanaian Lens has it on good authority that Mrs. Barnor personally told the late President Mills in the presence of the then Vice President that she believed that the Afrexim facility was a scam that E&P was using to avoid continuing to service its indebtedness to Merchant Bank. Having convinced herself that he Afrexim facility that would have helped not only E&P to stand firm, but would also have provided a veritable lifeline to Merchant Bank, the stage was set for Merchant Bank to go under such that it could be sold for a song and a dance as the offer made by First Rand Bank of South Africa proved. In the midst of all these difficulties, it is very interesting that the Marian Barnor-led board actually approved a huge loan for a foreign competitor of E&P!!! The foreign firm, Barnlaw Company Limited, a Scottish competitor of E&P, was given a huge facility with which the company bought machinery and went to La Cote D�Ivoire to work there. Indeed, our checks show that, unlike E&P that has been working in Ghana and also servicing its debts, Barnlaw has not been servicing its debt. In Fact, at the last check, Barnlaw had started moving out of La Cote D�Ivoire the equipments that it bought with the merchant Bank loan and sending the equipments to Liberia!!! Significantly, those who are screaming about safeguarding the contributions of pensioners have deliberately turned a blind eye to this apparent naked robbery of the Ghanaian pensioner by a foreign entity. Indeed, some observers believe that the insistent on the part of certain individuals that Merchant Bank should be sold to First Rand of South Africa is just so that these huge sums would become a burden for he pensioners. This view is informed by the fact that among the conditions offered by First Rand for purchasing of the bank was the fact that First Rand was not going to take responsibility for the loans that were weighing Merchant Bank down! Obviously, if first Rand buys the bank and would not take up the responsibility of retrieving the loans made out by the bank, it stands to reason that some people would have made a very tidy �killing� from that alone! As opposed to the First Rand proposal, Fortiz Equity Fund, the yet-to-be confirmed new owners of Merchant Bank pledged to go after the loans on the books and retrieve them. Yet the Fortiz proposal is not finding favour with those who are pushing for the First Rand bid. Be that as it may, the fact is that monies belonging to Ghanaian pensioners are locked up in a Scottish company that is now straddling between Liberia and La Cote D�Ivoire. Indeed, it is conceivable that these monies may never be retrieved at all. So why has Mrs. Barnor not been pursuing Barnla with the same zeal and determination that she had been pursuing E&P? Stay tuned. As we said, this is just the beginning.