I didn’t have $12million to investigate Akufo-Addo - Anas

Controversial investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas says he did not have the $12million dollars required to have proceeded with an investigation into whether or not President Akufo-Addo is corrupt during an expose to uncover corruption in football.

In the expose titled #Number12, the embattled former President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kwesi Nyantakyi was captured in a meeting with Anas' Tiger Eye PI collaborators who posed as a businessman, soliciting sums of money on behalf the President ($5million), Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia ($3million), the Transport Minister, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah ($2 million) and his deputy Anthony Karbo ($1million) to secure government contracts.

“The guy who is there [at the Transport Ministry], Asiamah; that is his [Kennedy Agyapong’s] small boy,” Kwesi Nyantakyi said.

“So, he [Karbo] mentioned that they wanted to make him [Kennedy Agyapong] a minister because of the contribution he made to the campaign. [Kennedy Agyapong] says he cannot be a minister because he is not a disciplined person to be a minister. But they [the government] gave him a ministry. They created a ministry and gave it to him and he nominated somebody as the minister. Yes, Ministry of Transport.”

Critics of Anas' documentary have questioned why he did not follow up the links to the Presidency to ascertain whether or not Akufo-Addo would have accepted the $5million Nyantakyi claimed could secure government contracts.

However, Anas in a radio interview on Joy FM Thursday said it was impossible for him to raise the $12million required for that probe.

He said: “Let’s put the investigation in context. How did President Akufo-Addo’s name come in? You speak to somebody, he begins to drop names. He says okay, if you want to speak to the man, you must carry an amount of $12milllion. Where was I going to get $12million? It’s not possible; nobody does an investigation with a budget of $12million.

“The fairness in all this is that somebody has made an allegation, are you giving the other party a fair opportunity of answering those allegations? So yes, then we went to the president and he gave us his side of the story, we went to the vice president, we spoke to all the ministers involved to give us their side of the story, then, we can understand the context which the person used to speak".

He urged anyone with concerns about the way that part of the investigation ended to proceed with an investigation of their own.

“It’s up to anybody who thinks he has issues with it to have to do further interrogation. We are all journalists, we have subjects we look at. If anybody feels that that place was not looked at properly, the person has the right, you can also look there. I know how to do a political story and I know how to do a football story. For God sake, it cannot be the same. They are different subjects.”

Anas insisted that his focus of the investigation was on football and therefore he decide to focus solely on the subject.