Freeze criminals' assets once investigations start – EOCO tells investigative bodies

Mrs Jacqueline Avotri, the Head of Public affairs at EOCO, has beseeched stakeholders not to waste time when conducting investigations into revenues generated by criminals once they are arrested.

She maintained that unfortunately, criminal responses which span from intelligence gathering to recovering stolen assets have been insufficient and have for that matter made it difficult to trace assets before, during and after investigations.

Speaking at the premiering of the anti-corruption programme, “Corruption Watch” in Accra Tuesday, June 18, she detailed that prosecuting these criminals alone and not tracing state funds is not enough.

Avotri stressed that all ill-gotten wealth of the suspects, both cash in bank accounts and properties found to be acquired from proceeds of the alleged crimes should be confiscated to the state without hesitation.

“Once the person has been sent to you, as an investigator, you need to trace the assets and it should run parallel to the investigations. You shouldn’t finish the investigations before you start looking for the assets," she said. "It is now a policy and directive. The very first thing you need to have in mind is to trace and track the assets”.

Corruption watch

Corruption Watch is CDD-Ghana’s foremost anti-corruption campaign in partnership with Multimedia Group which seeks to promote integrity in public life by demanding and activating the responsiveness and accountability of all actors in the anti-corruption space to ensure corruption cases are investigated, suspects prosecuted and stolen funds recovered.