Drag me to police if I took bribe from you - Anas dares critics

Ace investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas is daring persons who claim to possess incriminating evidence of wrongdoing by him to send such evidence to the police.

“Tiger Eye PI entreats all persons who claim they have incriminating evidence of wrongdoing on it to send such evidence to the police,” he said in a statement released in Accra.

The appeal was triggered after numerous articles and news circulated on the internet over the weekend, which purported that the journalist and his Tiger Eye PI team usually indulged in corrupt practices to shelve stories, while tarnishing the images of other public figures.

An alleged former member of the Tiger Eye PI investigative team, Mr Osei Agyeman, had alleged that the journalist operates with the sole motive of tarnishing hard-earned reputations of personalities to acquire wealth and fame.

He claimed the modus operandi of the ace investigative reporter is to win public confidence and sympathy, while amassing wealth, and seek to rise to fame on the back of blackmail.

The Anas accuser, who was a stringer with the New Crusading Guide newspaper based in the Brong-Ahafo Region, disclosed that since joining the Tiger Eye PI team of investigators, all the exposé so far conducted have been edited to suit the whims and caprices of Anas.

According to Osei Agyeman, all investigations conducted by the team turn to defame personalities in order to earn public sympathy and confidence. He condemned the mode of operation, which put the lives of its members at risk, only for Anas to make huge sums of monies from every video documentary, while those who toiled to get the information are given peanuts.

Mr Agyemang said there are instances when the Tiger Eye boss demand huge sums of foreign currencies and valuables from certain personalities, including politicians who served in the regimes of the late Prof. Atta Mills and John Dramani Mahama, and declined to premier the exposé with Anas gaining heavily.

He also commented on the recent galamsey fraud exposé which Anas indicated that the Secretary to the Inter Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Mr Charles Bissue, took a kick back to facilitate documentation to Orr Resource Enterprise. Mr Agyeman said the content of the documentary lacks credibility, and that Anas did that to tarnish the hard-earned image of Mr Bissue.

It is not clear why Mr Agyemang has jumped to the defence of Bissue, but he told The Chronicle in Kumasi that nowhere in the video documentary was Mr Bissue and Kobby captured demanding money from Anas and his team. Mr Agyeman also said that since the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining has a core mandate to regulate the mining industry, Mr Bissue made sure Anas had gone through all the mining processes needed before a permit was granted to Orr Resource Enterprise.

In the video, Mr Bissue was seen asking Anas if he had an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permit, mapping and stickers, on which premise Mr Osei Agyemang questioned the basis of the accusation that Mr Bissue was ready to take a bribe from Anas, else he would not have bothered to demand for all those relevant mining documents.

However, Anas Aremeyaw Anas has categorically stated that no member of Tiger Eye PI bears the name Osei Agyemang, and he doesn’t take money from anybody to kill stories.

“I would like to put on record that it has no employee by name Osei Agyeman, and neither have I taken money from any person to “kill” any story.”

It added that “these are textbook ‘fake news’ stories created by persons whose avowed aim is simply to ruin the enviable repute of Tiger Eye PI and myself. The Tiger Eye PI wishes to assure the public that it remains focused on its work, and no amount of false publications and smear campaigning would derail it.”