A Deputy Information Minister James Agyenim Boateng has stated categorically that former Information Minister Stephen Asamoa Boateng cannot travel out of the country. He said Mr Asamoah Boateng was a subject of an ongoing investigation by the Bureau of National Investigation and therefore cannot be allowed to travel outside Ghana.
Asabee and his family were for the second time in two months yanked out of a London-bound British Airways flight by operatives of the BNI on Monday night. Asamoah Boateng has described the action as a flagrant violation of his fundamental human rights to freedom of movement and threatened court action against the BNI. Mr Agyenim Boateng welcomed the move saying �if these are issues that are dear to his heart, he can resort to the courts which he knows how to do.� He told Joy FM on Tuesday that the only circumstance under which Asabee may be allowed to travel is when he seeks clearance from the security agencies. �Once he does that (seeks clearance), I am sure that the agencies and their officials will be reasonable enough to allow him to travel,� he emphasised.
�What the agencies do not intend happening is anything that will hamper the investigations and Mr Asamoah Boateng should reasonably submit himself so that the investigations can go on,� he added. The former Information Minister is alleged to have fraudulently awarded a contract to a company owned by his sister-in-law. He is therefore being investigated by the BNI on that matter. Mr Agyenim Boateng said the BNI wants to unravel the circumstances under which that transaction was carried out. Asabee who initially said he was not going to engage the Deputy Information Minister in arguments, submitted that the minister was speaking out of ignorance. He said the BNI was aware he was travelling and that the minister�s suggestion that he did not inform the agency investigating him was false. The exchanges was soon to get strained.
�Mr Asamoah Boateng, you do know that you occupied public office for a certain number of years, a few issues are beginning to crop up, and you owe it a duty to yourself and to your reputation, if any, to purge yourself of those allegations,� Agyenim Boateng retorted. Asabee said he was undaunted by what was happening, urging the government to remember that the precedence it was setting would be applied to its officials one day.
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