The Office of the Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice has fired back at former Deputy Finance Minister, Cassiel Ato Forson, describing his claims of a targeted prosecution as absurd and misleading.
Mr. Ato Forson claimed at a press conference on December 24 2021, that his prosecution for willfully causing financial loss to the State was initiated because he started raising concerns about the government’s 2022 Budget and Economic Policy.
Though the now Ranking Member on Parliament’s Finance Committee admits that EOCO questioned him with respect to the charges now preferred against him, he insisted at his press conference that he would not be cowed by the prosecution and that he would continue to speak up against government’s bad economic policies.
In a press release on Wednesday, January 5, 2022, signed by a Deputy Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Diana Asonaba Dapaah, the Office said the press conference was “laden with factual misrepresentations and calculated at scandalizing the criminal proceedings pending in the High Court against the Member of Parliament and exposing the Attorney-General to prejudice and hatred.
According to the Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice, “investigations into the financial crimes perpetrated against the Republic of Ghana in the matter of the failed purchase of ambulances for the State began in 2017.”
And “same had been ongoing since 2017 with a number of statements taken from various persons at different times” including Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, Mr. Kwaku Agyeman-Mensah, Madam Sherry Ayittey and Dr. Alex Segbefia, all former Health Ministers.
With an assurance that the Attorney-General will zealously prosecute crimes bordering on abuse of the public purse, the Office in its statement entreats all political commentators and “persons styling themselves as civil society” to refrain from undue public commentary on the prosecution.
