Mr Kwesi Nyantakyi, who resigned as Ghana Football Association (GFA) president and got banned for life by Fifa from all football-related activity following an undercover exposé by investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, which caught him on camera taking a bribe, has said the investigator was paid $400,000 to target and destroy him.

Also, Mr Nyantakyi, in his first-ever media interview following the corruption exposé, told Accra-based Net2 TV, owned by Anas’ nemesis, Assin Central MP Kennedy Agyapong, that Tiger Eye PI, owned by Anas, demanded $400,000 in bribe, through blackmail, as a condition precedent for the killing of the story.

“Oh yes”, he answered when asked if he was ever blackmailed in connection with the screening of the investigative piece, adding: “I’ve said this in my press statement”.

“They asked a lawyer who teaches in Legon – he [lawyer] knows him [Anas], he’s his friend – he contacted me and asked me to pay $150,000 and I said I didn’t have the money and that’s why all this hullabaloo came about. They were even demanding $400,000 because the exposé about me was a sponsored project … Anas was paid $400,000 to do that. And the money he gave me in Dubai, that money, he claims it’s $65,000; it has to be proven because I received $40,000”, Mr Nyantayi said.

One of Anas’ collaborators who was neck-deep in the production of the Number 12 piece, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, was assassinated last month in a shooting incident at Madina while going home around 10 p.m. The assailants made their getaway on a motorbike

Mr Nyantakyi, who, according to the police, was questioned in connection with the murder, told Net2 TV that: “I met him [Ahmed] several times”.

“He even came to my house once. You saw the way he dressed on the screen, in that Muslim attire, the Jalabia, throughout my encounters with him, that is how he dressed every day. He wore different colours of this same design. So, he came, some days in blue, some days in white and in other colours. And when he comes, he is so jittery; in a moment, he receives a call. When he is with you, within one hour – no it doesn’t take one hour – maximum 30, 45 minutes, he’ll receive about 10 to 20 calls. And then he has earphones, he has some wires connected to his dress all over. But it never occurred to me on any single occasion that he was engaged in this espionage work.

“The first time I met him, we met at Coco Vanilla in Accra here, and we met subsequently about 10 times. On one occasion, Abu brought him to my house and I met him in Dubai on two different occasions. So, I met him many many times”, Mr Nyantakyi recalled.

Asked if he ever met Anas during the undercover work, he said: “You know, the kind of work he does, he behaves like ISIS – You don’t meet him. You meet only one person. I met only Ahmed. I never met Anas or any other person from his outfit. And then, at the end of their so-called investigation, Anas and Tiger Eye claims responsibility for the outcome of the investigation. You don’t meet them. That’s how they do their work. I never met him. Meanwhile, he claims that he did this, he did that, met me at Dubai Airport. I never ever met him on even a single occasion, not even for a second.

“Tiger Eye is a criminal organisation. They don’t have a licence to do what they are doing. They are not licenced to do what they are doing. They are just on a wanton breakage and infringement of the law; just pouncing on people’s rights, recording them here and there; and disgracing them here and there without recourse to any opportunity for them to be heard to defend themselves. Because if you even record somebody and you think he has done something wrong, hand him over to the relevant state organisations to deal with him”, Mr Nyantakyi said.