The Office of
the Special Prosecutor (OSP) does not have the mandate to investigate financial
and economic crimes including probing the Power Distribution Services (PDS)
Ghana Limited saga.
It explained 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 OSP noted that the section also included “the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Protocol on the Fight against Corruption in their domestic anti-corruption legislations”.
This was contained in a statement issued in Accra by Martin Amidu, the Special Prosecutor after he received a petition from a section of the citizenry including civil society groups such as Good Governance Advocacy Group Ghana (GGAGG) to investigate the circumstances surrounding the suspension of the government’s concession agreement with the Power Distribution Services (PDS) Ghana Limited.
Although the government has initiated an enquiry into the circumstances leading to the non-fulfillment of conditions precedent to the full operationalisation of the agreement by the PDS, pressure continues to mount on the OSP to probe the matter.
It said “on August 6, 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 to investigate and prosecute fraudulent activities or supervision over corruption, nepotism, cronyism, favouritism and usurpation of another minister’s powers.
“The ruling of the High Court in the case of the Republic v Ayariga and 1 Other, July 17, 2019, High Court, Accra, 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 for educational purposes,” the statement said.
“I wish to repeat hereunder portions of presentations both locally and internationally and hope it helps well-meaning citizenry not to continue to create impression office can be knight errant roaming at will in search of ideals of crimes it wishes to investigate and prosecute. -classfmonline.com
