Identity of civil servant Anas' agent used to ‘infiltrate’ Finance Ministry revealed

Pro-government media outfit, Asaase Radio has reported the identity of the Ministry of Finance official who the Tiger Eye Private Investigation, PI, team used to get access into the ministry for an investigation in 2018.

That access triggered a series of meetings, whose contents were secretly recorded, and included in the ‘Galamsey Economy’ documentary recently released by Anas Aremeyaw Anas.

The documentary has since led to the dismissal of the Minister of State at the Finance Ministry, Charles Adu Boahen, who met with investigators clothed as investors in Dubai in 2018, at a meeting where he made comments impugning the integrity of vice president Mahamudu Bawumia.

Asaase Radio gave the name of the official as, Solomon Amponsah, who works at the External Resource Mobilization and Economic Relation Division of the Ministry of Finance.

Asaase Radio does not tell whether Mr. Amponsah was an accomplice of the investigators or that he facilitated an innocent meeting between the 'investors' and his bosses.

Amponsah is said to have “received a call from the late Ahmed Hussein-Suale, a Tiger Eye P.I. investigator, who suggested to Mr Amponsah to arrange a meeting between him (Ahmed Hussein-Suale), a Ghanaian Lawyer and the two Ministers of Finance in Dubai, towards a desire to open a bank in Ghana with about $500 million dollars.

“Subsequently, the Ghanaian lawyer and Charles Adu-Boahen on the strength of the arrangement made by Solomon Amponsah, met with the undercover team posing as investors in a hotel suite in Dubai on 8 February, 2018, just 13 months after the Akufo-Addo administration assumed office,” the report added.

It was at this meeting, first with Adu Boahen, then a deputy Minister of Finance that he was handed monies by the investigators.

A meeting with his boss at a Dubai airport, which the station said was aimed at bribing him under the pretext of giving him a gift was unsuccessful as an irritated Ofori-Atta and his then Personal Assistant walked away.

Adu Boahen is currently the subject of a corruption probe by the Office of the Special Prosecutor on instructions of the president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

SARA/PEN