Inusah Fuseini denies saying Amidu was paid as Special Prosecutor

Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Inusah Fuseini has clarified some comments he made about the payment of emoluments to the former Special Prosecutor.

In the said report, Mr Fuseini gave indications that Martin Amidu while he served as Special Prosecutor drew his salaries directly from the presidency.

The Ranking Member of Parliament’s Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee was quoted to have said; “For one whole year, Martin Amidu was drawing salaries from the Presidency…he was drawing a salary from the office of the President.”

This came as a contradiction to what Martin Amidu stated in his resignation letter to the President on November 16, 2020.

Parts of Mr Amidu’s resignation letter read; “It is essential for me to state for the purpose of the records, and contrary to public perceptions, that my appointment letter was received on 5th February 2020 (almost two (2)-years after my appointment). The copy addressees made no efforts to honour any of the conditions of appointment in terms of emoluments and benefits of the appointment ever since my warrant of appointment was issued on 23rd February 2018 to the date of my letter of resignation…The Deputy Special Prosecutor has also not been paid any emoluments since her appointment, and there is the need to redress that situation for her now that I am out of the way.”

However, in an attempt to bring clarity, Inusah Fuseini has said his comments about Mr Amidu’s emoluments have been misconstrued.

According to him, he is in no capacity to tell exactly where the former Special Prosecutor and his deputies drew their emoluments from.

“I have no capacity to say that the Special Prosecutor has been paid or not and I could not have said that since I was not the one responsible for the payment of his salaries. For the period that the Special Prosecutor was in office, I was neither working at the Presidency or his office,” he said, during an interaction on CitiNews.

Further justifying his position, he added that his argument was based on the difficulties the former Special Prosecutor faced in accessing his budgetary allocation over the period.

He said; “Even in 2019 when he was given US180 million, and he appeared before the Committee, he had not drawn 10 per cent of that money. So that money was not available to him. The problem is that the Special Prosecutor and his Deputy not being paid was a cause of alarm.”

“The Attorney General was unable to activate the GIFMIS platform for the benefit of the Special Prosecutor. So, in 2018, monies that were paid to the Office of the Special Prosecutor came from the Presidency which is the government machinery and not the budgetary allocation of the Special Prosecution. This explanation is part of the difficulties the Special Prosecutor faced in office”, Mr Fuseini added.