Stop intimidating heads of anti-corruption agencies – Amidu cries out

The Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu has condemned persons he says are attacking the Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo over his professional work.

The Auditor-General has been the subject of verbal attack since an audit report into the operation of the GETFund became public, with some persons mentioned in the report accusing the Auditor -General of being malicious and targeting them.

However Martin Amidu, who heads another anti-corruption institution, the Office of the Special Prosecutor said such attacks are an affront to the fight against corruption in the country.

In an exclusive interview with Citi News’ Umaru Sanda Amadu, Martin Amidu said the citizenry especially politicians must learn to separate the institution in question from the person of its head since doing otherwise amounts to intimidation.

“In this country, the political divide is both fighting anti-corruption agencies when they [the institutions] are doing their professional work…You can’t fight corruption by politicizing it.”

“For instance the Audit Service, there is a provision for a surcharge. If the Auditor-General through the report of his staff cannot disagree with them and therefore supports their conclusions and surcharges you, the law provides an avenue [so] you can challenge it. Why personalize it to the Auditor General? That is intimidation so it makes the Auditor General incapable of performing the anti-corruption duty… It creates a problem for the fight against corruption. It is inconsistent with our avowed pronouncements as a nation that we intend to fight corruption because intimidating the head of an anti-corruption agency is a non-starter,” the Special Prosecutor said.

‘Auditor General being malicious’

A former Administrator of GETFund, Sam Gariba, under whose supervision most of the infractions cited in the report happened, took a swipe at the Auditor General for the claims in the report, arguing that they were scandalous, ridiculous and unfounded.

He wondered why he will be surcharged for something he did with “due diligence”.

“The Auditor-General is not the law. The Auditor-General has gone and made some scandalous claims that I administered this thing without the Board’s permission, I had two boards in my time. One was chaired by Professor Mills, he is dead. He knew about everything through the board. How can the Auditor –General reach such a scandalous conclusion, what is their stake? How do they know that we gave scholarships to the detriment of needy people?” he said.

Dep. Agric Minister threatens to sue

Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, Kennedy Osei Nyarko in a Citi News interview threatened to sue the Auditor-General if he fails to retract his name from the list of beneficiaries of the GETFund scholarship.

Mr. Nyarko on the Point Blank segment of Eyewitness News, insisted that he never benefitted from a GETFund scholarship to study abroad.

“My focus is why does the Auditor put my name on the list when I have not benefitted? What is his motivation? What is he trying to achieve? We need to ask the Auditor General what his motivation is. As a responsible citizen, I am going to give the Auditor General an option. Either to retract what he has published and if he fails to do that then my lawyers will proceed to court.”

citinewsroom.com