Private Legal Practitioner Samson Lardy Anyenini, has suggested that for the Office of the Special Prosecutor to treat Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng as a suspect rather than a mere person of interest in the ongoing probe into illegal mining and the work of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining, must mean that the complaint against him is serious.

Details of Frimpong-Boateng’s formal arrest and subsequent GHȼ2 million bail on May 16 when he was invited by the OSP emerged only on Wednesday, June 7.

The former Environment Minister was invited by the OSP as “a person necessary for the investigations” into suspected corruption and corruption-related offences in respect of the activities and expenditure of
the dissolved Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM).

He willingly honoured the invitation, however events that ensued meant that Prof Frimpong-Boateng was a suspect. He was cautioned and granted bail, for which he says a friend had to stand surety, and officers of the OSP had to follow the friend to ascertain his residence.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Top Story on Wednesday, Lardy Anyenini who also hosts Newsfile on Joy FM noted that the Special Prosecutor has very wide powers per the law that sets the office up –Acts 959 (2017), and that it acted within its powers by its handling of the invitation to Frimpong-Boateng by exercising a basic, standard operating procedure.

“Once you are invited by the Office and you honour the invitation, it means you will help them not to arrest you. But once you step on their premises, you are either a person of interest from whom they are seeking information and through the process, they make a determination whether you should be a suspect or just a person of interest who could actually help them.

“There are circumstances where you may appear before them and they would have looked at you as a suspect but eventually would turn you into a person of interest who might even help them subsequently. But once they make the determination that you ought to be cautioned and have to be granted bail, in
the manner we know has happened to Prof Boateng, then it means that the complaint against him is very serious,” he explained.

He said about eight other people also cited in Prof Frimpong-Boateng’s report have also been invited by the Special Prosecutor for interrogation and granted bail.

According to Samson Lardy Anyenini, he expects the Office of the Special Prosecutor, as has become typical of its operations, to update the public on developments with the case of former Environment Minister.

He said the Special Prosecutor is also bound by law to provide information on its work, which helps to prevent the spread of rumours.

“It’s either they are issuing some preliminary statement to give the details that we have come to know them do or they will wait within the period that the law allows and requires them to so do - to update us on their website so that we will all get to know,” he said.