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A member of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, Michael Boadu says Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu was 'right' to have said that his office does not have the mandate to investigate Financial and Economic crimes.

According to him, the Citizens Vigilante’s office is not the appropriate office to investigate the Power Distribution Service [PDS] saga after the Ghana government suspended the deal over some infractions.

“His office cannot determine if this is fraud or corruption,” Michael Boadu said in an interview with NEAT FM’s morning show ‘Ghana Montie’. 

Martin Amidu has been opened that his office will not investigate the PDS saga after Good Governance Advocacy Group Ghana [GGAGG] served notice that it will petition the office of the Special Prosecutor to investigate the Power Distribution Service saga.

But Amidu in his reply stated that his ‘powers’ are limited.

“Just yesterday, 6th August 2019 I read, here in Ouagadougou, on Ghana Web that the Good Governance Advocacy Group Ghana (GGAGG) was petitioning “the Office of the Special Prosecutor to investigate the circumstances leading to the suspension of the Power Distribution Services concession agreement”.

It wants the Office to investigate and prosecute fraudulent activities or supervision over corruption, nepotism, cronyism, favouritism and usurpation of another Minister’s powers.

“The truth is that section 79 of Act 959 severely restricts the jurisdiction of the Office of the Special Prosecutor to fight corruption and corruption-related offences in Ghana unlike in other countries that are fully committed to and adhere to their obligations under the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption, and the ECOWS Protocol on the Fight against Corruption in their domestic anti-corruption legislations. The ruling of the High Court in the case of the Republic v Ayariga and 1 Other, 17th July 2019, High Court, Accra, (Unreported) underscored the point I have made on the remit of the Office to a limited extent only based on lack of detailed particulars and should be a guide to the public: I annex a scanned PDF of the ruling as a separate attachment to this paper for educational purposes,” the Special Prosecutor said in a statement.

Listen to Michael Boadu’s view on why Amidu cannot investigate the saga…