Tsatsu rubbishes deputy Attorney-General's assertion

Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, the former Chief Executive of Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), who was on Friday, last week discharged by an Accra High Court on allegations of causing the nation to lose billions of cedis, says he finds it very difficult to understand why the police had to inform him of his arrest at church when he had always made himself available to the security services at their invitations.

Speaking on Joy FM, an Accra-based radio station, a day after two plain-clothed men believed to be cops connected to the Deputy Attorney-General (AG), launched an abortive attempt seize him, Tsikata could not comprehend the motive behind the police move to inform him of his arrest at the time when he was going to seek the face of his creator.

“I think it is hard to understand a lot of things happening. I have made myself available to the police on every occasion when the asked to question me about anything. I have gone to their request… To have a situation such as I experienced on Sunday when I was going to church, that is very difficult for me to understand.”

Tsatsu, who stated his intention to honour the police invitation on Monday said, “They saw me on Friday in court and they know where to meet me in order to send messages about; why was it so important to them that in church I had to be informed that I was going to be arrested?” Tsatsu wondered and hoped, “But I will hope that whatever it is, we will get to the bottom of it.”

Tsatsu, who intimated that within 24 hours of his first invitation to the police station on November 29, last year he had five charges levelled against him, regretted the statement by the Deputy Attorney-General, Ms Gloria Akuffo, on Monday on the same radio station, which purported to have meant that he (Tsatsu) has been discharged on technicalities.

“I think it is a sad day for the country when the Deputy A-G says that fundamental legal issues which have been brought before courts, including the Supreme Court and the High Court, and that have been pronounced upon authoritatively are technicalities. He continued, “You know for instance in the High Court last Friday we were talking about legal principles, which are also universal principle. The Judge actually gave a rendition in Latin, again showing how far back that principle goes that you don’t charge somebody with a conduct which at the time he committed that conduct it was not a crime. If you do, then what that means is that you are retroactively applying criminal sanctions, something that at the time the person did it he could have had no idea of a crime.”

Again, Tsatsu noted that if the Deputy AG says that it is a technicality, then they must have a look at the charges themselves or they must have a look at the facts of the case and have satisfied themselves that this is the charge that is appropriate for them to bring. “I didn’t write the charges against myself, they brought out the facts which they thought was pertinent,” he contended.

The recently acknowledged legal wizard also regretted that despite the laws of the land saying that unless a man is found guilty by a law court he is innocent of the charges labelled against him, he has found out over the years, especially last year, that there were a number of people in the media, and other individuals who had pronounced him guilty effectively and were looking simply for a process that they would have regard as being a sort of fast track to his conviction.

The Deputy Government Spokesperson, Kwabena Agyepong, speaking on the programme later, expressed the government’s regret over the incident and accepted the responsibility from a point of view that government was going to take due action. “We were surprised to hear such a thing because we believe that such things have happened in the past and we have to learn from the mistakes of the past. And when things like that begin to recur then you need to look within yourself and accept some responsibility and take due action.” He noted that even if the officials had the instructions to send a message, what they should have done was to use their own discretion.