Court acquits Eric Amoateng over forged passport case
A former Member of Parliament for Nkoranza North in the Brong Ahafo region, Mr Eric Amoateng has been acquitted and discharged on a charge of possessing a forged travelling document.
Advertisement
Amoateng, who had completed serving a 10-year jail term in the USA on a drug-related offence, had pleaded not guilty to the charge of possessing a forged travelling document.
Graphic Online's Emmanuel Ebo Hawkson who was in court Tuesday morning reported that the presiding judge, Mrs Justice Vivian Amoah, held that the prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Amoateng knew that he was travelling with a fake document.
Mrs Justice Amoah who presided over the case at the circuit court was recently promoted as a High Court judge.
Amoateng was, on December 11, 2005, arrested in the United States for possessing heroin valued at $6 million.
He was tried, convicted and subsequently sentenced to a 10-year prison term and was released on July 30, 2014.
About 2.20 p.m. on August 7, 2014, Amoateng arrived at the Kotoka International Airport and during his arrival formalities, he was found to be in possession of a Ghanaian passport with the number H02347080.
The passport, the prosecution said, was in the name of one Barbara Inkum and was issued on February 23, 2009 at a time when Amoateng was in prison in the USA.
The prosecution said analysis of the passport by the Document Fraud Office of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) showed that the passport was a forged one as its bio data page had been substituted.
