Ayariga, Amidu fight over call recordings

Member of Parliament (MP) for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga, is prepared to take the fight to the Special Prosecutor, Martin A.B.K Amidu, as he has vowed to challenge a court order directing Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) to provide his audio conversations to Mr. Amidu.

According to the NDC MP, there was no need for Ghana’s first Special Prosecutor to go to court to secure an order for his phone calls through MTN to be released, as he could have gladly handed over his phone records.

An Accra Circuit Court on January 22, 2019, granted an order at the request of Mr. Amidu for the Managing Director of MTN to release the audio conversations of the MP and someone from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

Although he did not indicate what he needed the audio call records for, it’s believed to be in connection with ongoing investigations into how a confidential letter Mr. Amidu sent to the GRA allegedly got leaked to the Bawku Central MP.

Mr. Amidu, in an article last week, said he was prepared to get to the bottom of the matter.

The former Attorney General is unhappy about the ‘impunity’ with which Mr. Ayariga also forwarded the leaked letter to the Executive Director of Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), ACP K.K. Amoah, via social media platform, WhatsApp.

EOCO and the Office of the Special Prosecutor have been investigating Mahama Ayariga for alleged obstruction of investigations and other suspected offences.

The order by the court is to ostensibly unravel the source of the leakage which may have been communicated through the phone.

But the NDC MP appears offended by the order and has vowed to challenge the decision, indicating his lawyers have been instructed to do so.

“I will contest Martin Amidu’s court order for my MTN call records. I, Mahama Ayariga, would have gladly personally handed my MTN call records to Mr Martin Amidu, if he had just asked me directly, so he will see that I have never placed a call to Mr Kwasi Gyimah-Asante’s phone. I still do not know who Kwasi Asante-Gyimah is,” the MP said in a statement.

He also urged MTN not to hastily yield to the “overbroad” order of the court in the interest of its customers.

“MTN must be seen to exhaust all legal channels,” Mr. Ayariga added.