General News of Thursday, 13 August 2009

Source: jfm

Asamoah Boateng storms BNI

Former Information Minister Stephen Asamoah-Boateng is voluntarily turning himself in to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).

The former minister spoke to Joy News few minutes before arriving at the Ridge offices of the agency.

He goes there in the company of his lawyers Nene Amegashie and Sam Okudzeto from Okudzeto and Associates.

Mr Asamoah-Boateng’s move follows suggestions by sources at the BNI that attempts to reach him had failed.

The sources indicated the former Information Minister and Member of Parliament for Mfantseman West was being sought by the bureau to serve him with summons on charges of fraud in respect of a contract he awarded during his tenure at the ministry.

He was stopped from flying out of the country for the second time last week.

Speaking in an earlier interview with Joy FM, the former minister accused the bureau of deliberately creating the impression that he had absconded for fear of prosecution.

He alleged his mother-in-law was being traumatized as some BNI officials had been going to her residence under the pretext of looking for him – with some of them scaling walls of the house.

He has questioned the justification for officials of the bureau to be suggesting he has absconded when they have always known his whereabouts.