Some indicted judges set to petition Judicial Council
Some of the judges implicated in the recent judicial corruption scandal are to petition the Judicial Council to challenge the credibility of the investigative report by Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who is calling for their removal from office.
Advertisement
The challenge is informed by the fact that Tiger Eye PI, which carried out the investigations, is not a registered entity. Against that backdrop, they are expected to petition the Judicial Council to review the processes being undertaken to probe them over the alleged scandal.
The imminent action of the judges followed the outburst of a former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, Mr Martin Amidu, that the undercover investigative journalist operated illegally.
‘Dummy and fraudulent’
Mr Amidu had claimed that the modus operandi Tiger Eye PI used to conduct the investigations was “dummy and fraudulent”.
According to him, the company was not a registered entity and that he would go all out to produce evidence to expose a conspiracy between the government and Anas to undermine other arms of the government.
“There is no entity existing under the Constitution and laws of Ghana known as Tiger Eye or Tiger Eye PI. It only exists in a webpage created by the alleged CEO as a dummy with which the international and Ghanaian public has been conned for financial gain all these years,” he stated.
He also accused Anas of deliberately suppressing parts of the judicial corruption video to protect some of the judges and dared Tiger Eye PI to release the full, unedited video.
Review probing process
Speaking to Citi FM in Accra, Mr Charles Bentum, one of the lawyers for the indicted judges, said the revelations by Mr Amidu gave new insights for the judges to pursue the matter through designated channels.
Other Trending Stories
He argued that against the backdrop that Tiger Eye PI was not an incorporated person at law, as claimed by Mr Amidu, the petition submitted by Anas for the removal of the judges was illegal.
“The supposed person whose investigative report was received by the Judicial Council was Tiger Eye PI, who Mr Amidu is saying is not an incorporated person at law.
“What it means is that no petition in law has been submitted for the removal of our clients because you cannot put something on nothing and let it stand.
“If somebody does not exist in law, there is no way the person can present an investigative report as we have had in the last few months,” he argued.
He added that based on the latest development, he had the impression that the company, Tiger Eye PI Media Ghana Limited, was the same as Tiger Eye PI, adding, “I have now woken up to find that they are not the same.”
“And to that extent, we think that the whole processes that we have been through so far should be reviewed,” he further argued.
‘Don’t take petition seriously’
Speaking to the Daily Graphic, another lawyer for some of the indicted judges, Mr John Ndebugre, claimed that Mr Amidu had established sufficient evidence that the investigation leading to the petition calling for the removal of the judges was conducted by a “non-registered entity”.
“If the Chief Justice is proceeding to investigate these judges on the basis of a petition by a non-registered entity, neither the state nor the Chief Justice should take it seriously.
“This is because the whole investigative activity, as a process, was carried out fraudulently by Anas who is going about trapping people and making money out of it,” he stated.