Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu says his recently released Corruption Risk Assessment on the Agyapa Royalties Agreement must be taken seriously if Ghana wants to win the fight against corruption.

In a statement dated Tuesday, November 3, 2020, Mr. Amidu expressed frustration with attempts by various officials to trivialize the 64-page corruption risk assessment report.

“The sixty-four (64) page report was analyzed and assessed professionally and referenced with detailed analysis of the risk of corruption and anti-corruption assessment of the Agyapa Royalties Transactions from which no one can just pick and choose what he wants. The documents and the facts are real and were not manufactured by the Special Prosecutor.

“The Office of the Special Prosecutor was either seriously intended to prevent and fight corruption or was only intended as a showpiece to be trivialized. The sixty-four (64) page report must be taken seriously to make corruption a very high-risk venture in Ghana,” he said.

His comment follows a memo from the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta to President Akufo-Addo, rejecting the findings and allegations made in the report.

Mr. Ofori-Atta had argued that before initiating the transaction, the Finance Ministry had undertaken all the "necessary pre-requisite action required by law, from the procurement of transaction advisors to the submission of transaction documents to the Attorney General and Parliament for their review, input, and approval.”

This, he said made the Agyapa deal transparent despite the red-flags raised by the Special Prosecutor in his corruption risk assessment.

But in his latest statement sighted by JoyNews, Mr. Amidu said, the comments by the Finance Minister is in response to the first 13 pages that was released and not the full report.

Amidu’s work on Agyapa deal was sloppy at best – Chairman of Parliament’s Finance Committee

Meanwhile, Chairman of Parliament’s Finance Committee, Dr Mark Assibey-Yeboah says Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu did a sloppy job in his Corruption Risk Assessment on the Agyapa Royalties deal.

Interacting with the media in Parliament on Tuesday, Dr. Yeboah said whilst reading the report, it became clear that the Special Prosecutor was on ‘a fishing expedition’.

He describes the report as inconclusive, insisting that the Special Prosecutor did not do a thorough job.

“It has been a very sloppy job because he [Martin Amidu] states our work but he didn’t even speak to me, the Chairman on the Finance Committee. He came to Parliament gathering reports on the work that we have done as if he is going behind us to get some information.

“This work started in 2018 with the passage of the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) Law. These have been with the Committee for about two years, so for him to suggest that he doesn’t think the committee did a thorough job [is bad],” he stated.