Former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu has described the Akufo-Addo administration as a government that is irredeemably corrupt.
In an article, the Former Attorney General said “The politically inspired propaganda against my integrity which sought to link my resignation to the failure or refusal of this irredeemably corrupt Government for four whole years to deal with the simple offence of double salary or stealing (as the Criminal Investigations Department of the Police Service put it), are false, infantile and barefaced lies intentionally concocted and put out by the Office of the Attorney-General to the unsuspecting public under the sub-heading “Godfred Yeboah-Dame.” The effigy of the Attorney-General published alongside the concocted falsehoods of me resigning without prosecuting a case which was never handled by my office during my tenure as the Special Prosecutor demonstrates how shamefully low the hitherto respected ethical Office of the Attorney-General which I had the privilege of serving in for over fourteen years of my career has descended into since 7th January 2021.
“Throughout my tenure as the Special Prosecutor, the respected former Attorney General, Ms. Gloria Akuffo, never referred this case to me for further investigation or prosecution. Any experienced and ethical person who has ever occupied the office of Deputy Minister of Justice under the Constitution knows that the Attorney General never sends a docket to another independent investigatory or prosecutorial agency without a covering letter forwarding the docket with requisite instructions or requests.”
Read his full article below…
THE MPs DOUBLE SALARY CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DOCKET WAS HANDLED BY THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL AND NEVER BY MARTIN AMIDU AS SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
Introduction
On 17th May 2021, a friend called my attention to the fact that he had heard a radio discussion on Oman FM in which I was being blamed for the Government’s inability to prosecute the Members of Parliaments’ double salary case which the Office of the Attorney General had allegedly transferred to my office for prosecution, and I had failed or refused to prosecute same before my resignation. This was certainly a deliberate and knowing concoction of fake news from the newly minted Office of the Attorney General to assassinate my integrity and character.
My researches led me to the Daily Guide Network report in its publication of 10th May 2021 under the heading: “MPs Double Salary Bounces Back” in which it attributed the inability of the Attorney-General’s Office to prosecute the suspects in the case that has come to be known as the Members of Parliament Double Salary Scandal to the infantile and banal fact that: “the Office of the Special Prosecutor which was headed by former Attorney General Martin A.B.K. Amidu, took over the case to do the prosecution but the process was not completed until he resigned late last year.”
Attorney General’s Politically Inspired Propaganda To Tarnish Amidu’s Integrity On MPs Double Salary
The politically inspired propaganda against my integrity which sought to link my resignation to the failure or refusal of this irredeemably corrupt Government for four whole years to deal with the simple offence of double salary or stealing (as the Criminal Investigations Department of the Police Service put it), are false, infantile and barefaced lies intentionally concocted and put out by the Office of the Attorney-General to the unsuspecting public under the sub-heading “Godfred Yeboah-Dame.” The effigy of the Attorney-General published alongside the concocted falsehoods of me resigning without prosecuting a case which was never handled by my office during my tenure as the Special Prosecutor demonstrates how shamefully low the hitherto respected ethical Office of the Attorney-General which I had the privilege of serving in for over fourteen years of my career has descended into since 7th January 2021.
Throughout my tenure as the Special Prosecutor, the respected former Attorney General, Ms. Gloria Akuffo, never referred this case to me for further investigation or prosecution. Any experienced and ethical person who has ever occupied the office of Deputy Minister of Justice under the Constitution knows that the Attorney General never sends a docket to another independent investigatory or prosecutorial agency without a covering letter forwarding the docket with requisite instructions or requests.
Mr. Godfred Yeboah Dame, the young and inexperienced Attorney General should know now that he is the Attorney General that there are no records in his office or the Director of Public Prosecution’s office showing that the Attorney-General, Ms. Gloria Akuffo, old enough to be Mr. Dame’s mother, sent any docket on this case to me as Special Prosecutor to prosecute. No such letter was ever received by me when I was the Special Prosecutor, and no records exists in the Office of the Special Prosecutor of receipt of such a letter or docket from Ms. Gloria Akuffo.
Mr. Godfred Yeboah Dame under whose name the Daily Guide Network reports and attributes the infantile lies that: “the Office of the Special Prosecutor which was headed by former Attorney General Martin A.B.K. Amidu, took over the case to do the prosecution but the process was not completed until he resigned late last year” ought to have developed the capability of asking the Director of Public Prosecutions as to the status of the case instead of linking to my resignation to a matter which never came under my watch just to assassinate my character.
President Akufo-Addo Determines Criminal Prosecutions – Not The Attorney General
The credible information I received on the case is and was that the then Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions had both perused the case docket and had come to the conclusion that charges be filed against some of the suspects for prosecution. The Attorney General was instructed not to do so by the President who unconstitutionally usurped the investigatory and prosecutorial constitutional authority of the Attorney General on grounds of political expediency of having the suspects agreeable to play ball in Parliament for the Government.
This view is consistent with the clear unconstitutional usurpation of the independent exercise of prosecutorial discretion of the Attorney General by President Nana Akufo Addo in his response to a question asked by Kweku Dawuro of Kingdom FM on the government’s fight against corruption on 13th December 2019, particularly the prosecution of the double salaries and other criminal cases. The President unconstitutionally assumed the status of the Attorney General of Ghana and shockingly said, inter alia, on the members of parliament double salary cases as follows:
“…The double salary and members of parliament: it is not a straightforward allegation of misappropriation that some people think. There is a whole lot of double counting, to what extent people were taking money vis- a-vis the emolument of the article 70 and all that, and I am thinking that unless the thing is really clear cut and it has not been made quite clear to me, to rein a whole lot of parliamentarians and the list is quite a lot, to rein a whole lot of parliamentarians on a fifty -fifty case, for myself I don’t think that we will be doing the public interest of our country any service in that way. So the process of seeing to what extent the set off can be, there is been ongoing, there is a group doing that work and when they finish we be in a position to let the country know what the final outcome of the double salary thing is…”
The framers of the 1992 Constitution followed the hallowed tradition of Anglo-Ghanaian jurisprudence by enshrining the prosecutorial powers of the Republic of Ghana in an Attorney-General who is professionally responsible for prosecutorial decisions made on a non-partisan basis and not the President. I served as Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General for almost fourteen years and can testify to the fact that no Head of State or President ever sought to direct or interfere with the prosecutorial discretion of the Attorney General during that period. The President’s response at the media encounter of 13th December 2019 is the first time I ever heard, in my life, a Presidentunashamedly and publicly usurping an independent prosecutorial constitutional discretion of an Attorney General. The allusion by the President to a group performing the constitutional duties of the Attorney General to enable the President to decide, and “be in a position to let the country know what the final outcome of the double salary thing is…” shows beyond every reasonable doubt the interfering role of this President in the administration of criminal justice in deciding who must or must not be prosecuted for crime and not the Attorney General. The Attorney General regrettably became a poodle of the President by ceding his or her constitutional prosecutorial mandate to the usurping President.
By Laud Nartey/3news.com/Ghana
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