Anas drags presidential staffer, others caught receiving bribes to Special Prosecutor

Undercover journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas has petitioned the office of the Special Prosecutor to investigate presidential staffer Charles Cromwell Bissue and other officials caught on tape taking bribes to work against the fight on small scale illegal mining.

A member of the legal team of Anas, Sammy Darko, revealed Thursday that they have presented all the necessary evidence the Tiger Eye PI team gathered in their latest investigative documentary Galamsey Fraud, to the Special Prosecutor.

“A complaint together with the rushes, transcripts, expired mining licence…permit with barcode to mine and receipt of the only statutory payment Tiger demanded to serve as proof that they dealt with the IMCIM were this morning presented to the Office of the Special Prosecutor,” Mr Darko said in a Facebook post.

He explained the petition was submitted to the Office of the Special Prosecutor in line with section 26 of Act 959.

Per section 3 of the Act, the Special Prosecutor is mandated to at least investigate the complaints.

The legal practitioner thus described as late, the government decision to gather all the unedited visuals to facilitate an investigation into the matter.

The government said Thursday that it was going to request for the raw visuals from Anas to conduct its own investigations into allegations that some officials of the Inter-ministerial Committee on illegal mining had taken bribes to circumvent due process in their work.

“Government will have the said tapes properly investigated using the raw unedited footage and if any person is found to have solicited money or taken bribe to bend rules, the necessary actions will be taken,” Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said.

However, Mr Darko said that the Tiger Eye PI team as standard procedure, on Wednesday presented a copy of the documentary to the presidency “to watch and decide for itself”, adding “as to whether they would keep persons named or fire them is up to them and the public”.

He contended that the documentary which was premiered Thursday meets international standards and “any editorial standard in any of the enviable media houses around the world”.

He said it was the same standard used for the ground-breaking Number12 documentary which crumbled football in Ghana that was used for the latest documentary.



Background

In the Galamsey Fraud documentary, Mr Bissue emerges as a facilitator for a company seeking to circumvent laid down processes to be given clearance for its mining operations.

He is captured in a secretly recorded video receiving wads of cash to facilitate the speedy ‘clearance’ of Orr mining company in order that it can begin mining as soon as possible, and is heard in the video instructing his subordinates over the phone to “fast track” the processing of the company’s documents.

This he was heard saying should be done “low key”.

Several others connected to the work of the IMCIM, otherwise known as the Presidential Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, including military and police officers, were seen in the video playing “facilitating” roles at negotiated fees.