Akufo-Addo directed me not to take any further steps on Agyapa deal – Martin Amidu reveals

Former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu has refuted claims that President Akufo-Addo had not interfered with his anti-corruption assessment report on the controversial Agyapa Royalties deal as stated in the President’s November 17 response to his resignation letter.

The President in a letter written by his secretary denied interfering in Mr Amidu’s anti-corruption assessment report following claims by the former Special Prosecutor that government had been encroaching on his work while in office.

The President’s Secretary claimed that “it is difficult to find any tangible basis for the claim of political interference in the performance of your functions from 20 October, 2020 to 1 November, 2020.”

“The President’s meetings with you and the request for you to give the public officers a hearing cannot sincerely or properly give rise to such an allegation,” he added in the November 17, letter.

However, in Mr Amidu’s latest response to the President’s letter on Friday, he insists that the President had indeed interfered in his work.

In a 27-page letter, the former Special Prosecutor revealed that the President had on two different occasions directed him to halt any further investigation into the Agyapa Mineral Royalties deal.

He stated: “It was only when the President directed me through his Chief of Staff in the morning of 21 October, 2020 in her office at 8:40 in the forenoon not to take any further steps on the Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions anti-corruption assessment report until I met the President on Friday, 23 October, 2020 that I was awoken to the suspected realization that the President’s holier than thou pontifications about fighting corruption did not extend to doing so without fear or favour, affection or ill will to cases in which the President’s ox is gored.

“I reported my concerns immediately thereafter to the late former President Emeritus Jerry John Rawlings who had always acted as a go-between, between the President and me in his Office in the presence of a surviving third party. Indeed, it was upon the former President Emeritus’ insistence that my mere presence as the Special Prosecutor contributed to reducing the rape of the public purse through corruption activities that I stayed in my position that long. He was the insurance for my independence of action.

He continued, “The demands made on me by the President when I met him in his Office on Friday, 23, October 2020 to withhold any further action on the tax haven based Agyapa Royalties Limited anti-corruption assessment report convinced me instantly that he had laboured under the mistaken impression that I could be his poodle.

“The interfering demands made by the President on the performance of my functions as the Special Prosecutor is the only explanation for me telling the President immediately in his office that I did not intend to continue as the Special Prosecutor.”