Celebrated investigative journalist, Manasseh Azure Awuni, has said he hopes that the law will take its course on cases of criminalities among public officers who steal from the state to enrich themselves.

He said he hopes this will scare other perpetrators from engaging in such illegal acts.

He also indicated that he hopes no powerful chief will intervene for people accused of stealing, but to allow them face the law to bring sanity into the system and also to serve as deterrents to others who have the intention to loot public funds to enrich themselves.

Reacting to the alleged embezzlement of public funds by the former Director-General of the National Signals Bureau (NSB), Kwabena Adu-Boahene, on his X account, he said that the Attorney General (AG) should stand on his grounds and not allow any form of intimidation in his work.

“People steal so blatantly from the state because they get away with it. I hope no powerful chief intervene for the thieves” he said.

The Attorney General had earlier accused Adu-Boahene of misappropriating $7 million meant for a cyber defense system contract and laundering the funds through real estate investments in Ghana and abroad.

He is alleged to have used a private company he secretly established to divert state funds.

The accusations have since led to his arrest at the Kotoka International Airport upon his return to Ghana.

However, lawyers of Adu-Boahene and his wife, Angela Adjei Boateng, have reacted to the AG’s allegations, saying that the claims are a violation of their clients' fundamental human rights.

In the writ, it stated “Midmorning today, the 24th day of March, 2025, the Learned Attorney General of the realm, Hon. Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, in his reset version of the rule of law, and romancing the press, pronounced our clients guilty of state looting, in the court of public opinion, and cheapened the press conference by saying our clients are still being investigated by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO).

“The Learned Attorney General has been a distinguished lecturer of law and we cannot fathom why he would use the power of the press rather than his advocacy at the Bar to feed the general public with his prejudicial and skewed information, which he unprofessionally called evidence to poison the general public and by extension the entire world against our clients."

It said the power to investigate any Ghanaian for alleged criminal offences has no party colours and it is a painstaking exercise to ensure that the rights of citizens are not abused and their personalities rubbished by those who wield the powers of the state to conduct that sacred exercise.

“All professional investigations—and not party investigations—are devoid of razzmatazz and propaganda. The suspect, who is the subject matter of the investigation, should not be disgraced before the assemblage of the so-called facts which will point him out as an accused person,” it added.

The lawyers said the suspect is not an accused person until the facts clinically put together through investigations graduate into a docket for a full case which will see him formally charged.

VA/AE

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