Baffour Awuah knew about ongoing EOCO investigation – AG secretary
by Miss Naa · MyNewsGh.comPress Secretary at the Office of the Attorney General Benjamin Alpha Aidoo says the attempt by EOCO to arrest Manhyia South MP Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah did not come without prior engagement.
- Mr Aidoo said the matter had been ongoing since February, with correspondence between Mr Awuah and EOCO before the latest attempt to arrest him.
He said Mr Awuah’s office initially responded to an EOCO letter by forwarding it to the Clerk of Parliament because he was then serving as an MP.
According to Mr Aidoo, EOCO subsequently maintained that it was seeking to engage Mr Awuah in his personal capacity and that parliamentary immunity under Article 117 did not apply in the circumstances.
He said officers from the company under investigation had also engaged EOCO, but that did not satisfy the agency’s request to speak directly to Mr Awuah.
“The letter that was written was written to him personally as a senior partner of the firm,” Mr Aidoo said on TV3’s News Day.
“The fact that other officers from his firm or his client attended to the EOCO does not satisfy the requirement that he personally was needed.”
Mr Aidoo said the MP therefore had full knowledge that an investigation was ongoing and that EOCO wanted to speak to him personally.
“He had full knowledge that it was an ongoing investigation. He was needed for these investigations and that is why officers proceeded to effect the arrest,” he said.
He also rejected the suggestion that the passage of time between the first correspondence in February and the attempted arrest made the action improper.
“So why wait between February and then this time around? There’s no specific time for arrest. The investigators know what they want at every point in time,” he said.
Mr Aidoo said allowing people to determine when and where investigative agencies could arrest or invite them for questioning would undermine investigations.
“If we are supposed to choose when and where and at what time an investigative body would invite us, you can imagine the chaos and how it will stampede the work of investigative bodies,” he said.
Source: MyNewsGh.com
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