A private legal practitioner, Yaw Oppong has disagreed with calls for the immediate prosecution of some witnesses who have appeared before the Presidential World Cup Commission of inquiry.
The president of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe on the Citi FM’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue over the weekend suggested that the Commission’s ongoing investigations must be halted for the Attorney General to begin arraigning the witnesses before court.
But in an interview with Citi News, Yaw Oppong clarified that the witnesses can only be prosecuted by the Attorney General (AG) if the Department conducts its own investigations separate from that of the Commission.
He explained that a “law has set up the commission of enquiry and you need to go through a whole process. The President cannot just get up to say that I have set aside that instrument.”
According to Oppong, the instrument went through Parliament with a specific time frame.
[contextly_sidebar id=”GrceRFpexZ0x4LGC7r7HllNBrp7uoymD”]The private legal practitioner indicated that it will be wrong for the President to set aside the executive instrument for the commission to cease its public hearings for the Attorney General to start prosecution.
He however mentioned that “while the prosecutions are going on, there is nothing wrong with the Attorney General going to court for civil proceedings to be granted against these people based on the evidence they have given before the commission.”
President John Mahama set up a three-member commission to probe Ghana’s organization and participation into the 2014 World Cup tournament in Brazil.
This was necessitated by Ghana’s abysmal performance at the tournament and the series of scandals which broke out during the event.
Since the commission began its work, startling revelations have come up including the inflation of feeding fee the supporters who were flown to Brazil to cheer the Black Stars on, the payment of $20,000 to an individual for directions to a super market , among others.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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