'Evidence is not in my face or in my beads' – Anas Aremeyaw Anas defends anonymity

Investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas has explained his decision to hold on to his anonymity amid a recent court ruling that he testifies in-camera without his trademark face beads.

The Tiger Eye PI CEO stressed that his work always generated enough evidence for courts to make definitive determinations in criminal trials and so calls to reveal his identity were unfounded.

“I think that the evidence is not in my face, it is not in my beads,” he told DW Africa in an interview in their studios in Germany.

“Journalism is about hard work, it is about hardcore evidence and so if you are in a court of law, you put before all these evidence and a judge will sit and make sense out of the evidence,” he stressed.

He added that he is not new to the ‘Name, Shame, Jail,’ kind of journalism but that evidence abounds of how his work has resulted in people going to jail. He cited works like the Chinese sex mafia, case of sexual predator Nana Agyemang Asante and that of the judges.

“I am a product of the society, I do what makes sense to my grandmother in the village and so there is no point in doing journalism and walking on the same street with the bad guys,” he added.

Anas also disclosed that he will soon release a documentary that will shake the foundation of Ghana.

The documentary, he said would be released before the 2024 elections and would be an investigative piece on some politicians.

“The work that I am doing now might be the last before we get into the elections. But already the signs are very clear and I can tell you that the foundation would be shaken once again.

“There are a couple of international ones that are about to be released. But this one talking to you as a Ghanaian, I mean the foundation of Ghana would be shaken,” he told DW journalist, Michael Oti.



He added that he’s being thorough with the upcoming documentary so that it can have an effect just like the last one which led to the removal of the former Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance, Charles Adu Boahen.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas has recently been drawing criticisms from a section of the public following the loss of the defamation lawsuit he filed against the Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong.

In a recent verdict by the Accra High Court on a defamation suit filed by Anas, the presiding judge chided him for supposedly practising “investigative terrorism” and not investigative journalism.

The journalist was also criticised for his ‘Galamsey Economy’ documentary which implicated Charles Adu Boahen and led to his sacking with some accusing him of entrapping the former minister.



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