The Deputy Minister for Information, Pius Enam Hadzide has asserted that no one at the Presidency or government even in a little way tried to interfere with the work of the Special Prosecutor as alleged in Martin Amidu’s resignation letter.
According to him, the Special Prosecutor received all the support he could ever get in his various investigative work and especially on the Agyapa deal which is the major premise for his resignation.
Portions of his resignation letter read;
I should not ordinarily be announcing my resignation to the public myself but the traumatic experience I went through from 20th October 2020 to 2nd November 2020 when I conveyed in a thirteen (13) page letter the conclusions and observations on the analysis of the risk of corruption and anti-corruption assessment on the Report On Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions and Other Matters Related Thereto to the President as Chairman of the National Security Council caution against not bringing my resignation as the Special Prosecutor with immediate to the notice of the Ghanaian public and the world.
In undertaking the analysis of the risk of prevention of corruption and anti-corruption assessment I sincerely believed that I was executing an independent mandate under the Office of the Special Prosecutor, Act, 2017 (Act 959) and the Office of the Special Prosecutor (Operations) Regulations, 2018 (L. I. 2374). The reaction I received for daring to produce the Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions anti-corruption report convinces me beyond any reasonable doubt that I was not intended to exercise any independence as the Special Prosecutor in the prevention, investigation, prosecution, and recovery of assets of corruption. My position as the Special Prosecutor has consequently become clearly untenable.
Pius Hadzide in an interview with Samuel Eshun, host of the Happy Morning Show aired on e.TV Ghana and Happy 98.9 FM said, “The President has a ton of respect for Martin Amidu and the mood has always been one of mutual respect and cordiality and I believe that His Excellency will be shocked by his resignation. The President has always demanded of us to support all the anti-graft and anti-corruption agencies unimpeded”.
He noted, no one had the inclination of the resignation of Martin Amidu. “No one expected this move from Martin Amidu, We’ve all been taken aback”.
The Deputy Minister for Information furthered that Martin Amidu received all the support and cooperation from the Ministry of Finance in his investigations into the Agyapa deal as opposed to claims in his (Martin Amidu’s) resignation. “The Ministry even suspended the processes of the Agyapa deal just to help the Special Prosecutor. Major stakeholders involved in the deal availed themselves to be interviewed but Martin Amidu in a letter said that was not relevant regardless of our insistence”.
He reiterated that the move of the Special Prosecutor was sudden but wished him well on his future endeavours. “Notwithstanding, the President will move quickly to find a non-partisan individual to fill the gap left by Martin Amidu”, he declared.
By: Joel Sanco
