Four policemen, including the commander at East Legon District interdicted over a $1.3 million gold scam, have accused the police administration of mounting what they claimed to be ‘negative campaign’ against them.
The commander, DSP Emmanuel A. Basintale, together with his subordinates RSM John Sovor, G/CPL Baleto Boafour and G/LCPL Cyrus Egbert Conduah, have therefore served notice to sue their employers to demand justice.
There is currently a ragging issue in which a United States firm, Green Global Resources, is accusing Ghana Police Service hierarchy of corruption in the gold case.
The Director of Strategy and Business Development of Green Global Resources, James Barbieri, alleged at a news conference in Accra that “in this situation, a lot of senior police officials and some other junior ranking officials, including BNI officers, were allegedly protecting the scammers,” a charge the police leadership has denied vehemently.
A news release issued in Accra by Kissi Agyabeng, the lawyer representing the policemen said the Ghana Police Service had engaged in what he called “negative media publications” against his clients and added that that had “encouraged other persons and entities to defame and soil our client’s reputation.”
He said his clients never engaged in any professional misconduct as being portrayed by the police and added that the policemen were not detained in any police station.
“Our clients arrested certain accused persons in connection with a gold case reported to the East Legon Police Station and processed them for court,” he said in the statement, adding that “on November 22, 2016, while the officer in charge of the prosecution was in the process of amending the charges to reflect the appropriate offences, the CID Headquarters took over the investigation of the case from East Legon.”
According to the lawyer, a CID publication of June 12, 2017 acknowledged that one Courage Gegepe, the supposed gold buyer at the center of the raging issue upon his arrest in November last year had disclosed that he and his accomplices were engaged in a scheme and defrauded the complainants, adding that “by a signal of February 17, 2017 and referenced as PO.2811/21, our clients were interdicted without any stated reason whatsoever.”
“As at May 18, 2017, more than three months after their interdiction, no disciplinary proceedings had been instituted against our clients,” the statement said, adding “the Inspector-General was mandatorily required to revoke the interdiction for our clients to resume duty.”
According to the lawyer, the Ghana Police Service has been unable to answer questions they raised about the interdiction, saying “this is because if any disciplinary proceedings have been instituted, it was done in breach of C.I. 76.”
The lawyer said his clients were dutifully doing their jobs and proceeded to arraign the suspects before court, adding that “our clients have not engaged in any act of criminality by any stretch of the legal and factual imagination.”
He said the “the confessed suspect, who had been charged with the respective offences before court, were freed by the CID Headquarters,” adding “the CID Headquarters has now declared them wanted again.”
The lawyer said it was on record that the suspects confessed to defrauding the complainants and switching the actual gold for fake gold.
“Our clients have borne in silence the brunt of the odium the publications reduced them in their name, reputation and standing in society until now,” adding “at first, we gave the Ghana Police Service the veracity or otherwise of the allegations, should it find the need to do so upon their interdiction. However, recent events have informed us that the service is unwilling to act within the confines of the law and regulation in this matter.”
By William Yaw Owusu