Amidu unamused by Prez’s directives to fight corruption
A former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr Martin Amidu, has described President John Mahama’s orders to the Attorney-General to retrieve money wrongfully paid to Waterville and Isofoton as smacking of opportunism and propaganda.
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President Mahama last week ordered the A-G’s Department to, among others, retrieve all moneys wrongfully paid to those companies as part of the government’s strategy to fight corruption .
But, in a statement, Mr Amidu said the President was appropriating the Supreme Court ruling ordering the two foreign companies to return money they illegally obtained to the state to shore up his government's credentials as one committed to fighting corruption.
He said the President’s orders were unnecessary, to the extent that the highest court of the land had made the same pronouncement in its judgement on the case he (Mr Amidu) had brought before it.
“The lumping of the execution of the judgements and orders of the Supreme Court in the Waterville and Isofoton declarations with suspected misappropriations and misapplications of public funds under this very government in the contracts with SADA, GYEEDA and the Ghana Revenue Authority smacks of opportunism, propaganda and downright disingenuity.
“It is not for the President or his government to decide whether or not to retrieve the moneys involved in the deliberate breaches of the Constitution perpetrated by the very government in favour of its foreign friends in Waterville and Isofoton. The Supreme Court has made those conclusive declarations, orders and directions already,” he said.
Mr Amidu raised serious issues with large portions of the President’s speech to representatives of anti-corruption organisations, saying the President “appears to pretend that there exists in Ghana today ‘various independent anti-corruption and governance institutions, including CHRAJ, EOCO, etc…’”.
He said his “experience with EOCO and CHRAJ, as presently constituted, when I was in government does not” support the President’s claim that those organisations were truly independent.
“These institutions were established to be independent and impartial in the execution of their duties to all Ghanaians without political colouration,” he noted.
He, however, said a former NDC ambassador’s daughter was sitting “on one of the provable corruption cases in which I provided her all the material evidence from the United Kingdom; and the EOCO is known to me to chicken out of water-tight criminal cases when it detects the involvement of government or its associates”.
