Board chairman of the Ghana Audit Service Prof. Edward Duah Agyemang has dismissed claims of interference by the Auditor General, Daniel Domelevo.

Mr Domelevo has petitioned the president claiming the board chair is seeking to take over procurement procedures and is directing staff at the service without due regards to him the boss.

According to Prof Duah Agyemang, he had already done an auditing of the public accounts as Auditor General before leaving the office in 2009 and did not understand why some auditors had gone back to audit those accounts.

“I called them to find out why they were going there to audit accounts from 2007 to 2015. But it turned out they were also going to audit some three contracts in 2017, so I asked them why they were doing that because the Auditor General was not in town,” he said.

He explained that was his reason for calling them and it had nothing to do with interfering with anything they were working on but rather “an intervention of what the CEO of NHIA came to tell me.”

His comments follow reports that the President has instructed his Secretary to look into a petition by Mr Domelevo, accusing Prof Dua Agyeman of interference.

Related: President directs probe into Auditor-General petition against Board Chair

Nana Asante Bediatuo has also been tasked to report the outcome of discussions between the two public officials.

In a five-page petition dated July 27, 2018, sighted by Myjoyonline.com, the Auditor-General requested the President to intervene in the “unlawful interferences” by the Board Chairman and others whom he said, are clothing themselves with powers to direct and control him unconstitutionally.

Domelevo further threatened not obey “any unlawful instructions” from the Board, including existing and new decisions that he says are inconsistent with the Constitution.

But Prof Dua Agyemang said, it is not a matter of any law giving him the authority to do that but the Audit Service exists to carry out a particular job and as Chairman of the Board, it behoves of him to ensure the accounts are audited in accordance with the law."

Regarding the part of the petition which claimed that Prof Dua took certain trips without recourse to the Board, he rather accused the Auditor General of doing that.

“He travels without telling us and he keeps insisting that as far as he is concerned, he is not answerable to the Board and we thought that was wrong," he said.