The Attorney General’s (AG) Department has described as false, reports of missing files on a case being built against waste management giant, Zoonlion Ghana Limited, adding the said evidence are not sufficient to warrant prosecution.
Investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni was said to have reported that two reports of CHRAJ submitted to the AG’s Department had gone missing, apparently alleging a cover up.
But a statement issued Monday, June 3 by the Department Monday asked the public to disregard such claims on grounds of falsehood, saying “the report is false and should be disregarded”.
“Two CHRAJ reports were received by our office in June, 2018. Both reports were forwarded under cover of a letter with the subject “SUBMISSION OF REPORT OF INVESTIGATION PURSUANT TO SECTION 10(3) OF THE WHISTLEBLOWER ACT 2006 (ACT 720),” the department admitted.
It explained that the the first report dated June 7, 2018 received on June 11, 2018 was forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecution, while the second report dated June22, 2018 was received at the office on June 27, 2018 and forwarded to the Solicitor-General for necessary attention.
The CHRAJ report submitted in June 2018 is on a 2007 contract on Sanitation Improvement Programme and waste management. A CID docket on the matter, the AG’s Department said, is currently under review by the office which covers sanitation related contracts between 2012 and 2017.
“These are two separate matters and both the docket from CID and the CHRAJ report are receiving the necessary attention by our office,” it indicated. According to the AG, when Manasseh requested for update on the reports, a search on the Department’s data system could not trace any such report “because the entries made in our system captures the subject matter as is on the forwarding letter, the date of the letter and the date received”.
The Department said it could therefore not trace “a CHRAJ Report on Zoomlion” the data system since those details were not the ones captured into the system. “This is what Mr Awuni has chosen to misreport to the public that the said report is missing,” the AG’s statement said.
It said the fact that the title requested for is unknown to the Department’s system “does not mean the report is missing. The properly titled report is available to the Department and currently being worked on”.
Meanwhile, the AG’s Department indicated that at a prosecution retreat, Manasseh was invited to give an overview of evidence he claimed to have which would assist the department with its work.
He was said to have presented a brief to that effect.
“Officers of the Department explained to him that the information he provided was insufficient to sustain a prosecution thus the need for further evidence gathering,” the AG’s Department said on Monday.
Manasseh, according to the Department, promised to provide more documents but has since been unable to do so. “He subsequently directed us to the director, legal of the Auditor-General’s Office for the documents we require. The Department remains in touch with the director and is yet to receive the full compliment of the promised documents,” it said.
The AG’s Department said it will continue to work diligently to ensure that the tenets of justice are upheld in all matters brought before it.
It has further urged journalists to “desist from hurried attempts to misreport matters” in a manner that causes public apprehension.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
