NPP welcomes Amoateng...but grabbed for fraud

Former Member of Parliament and Ex-convict, Eric Amoateng, who touched down in Ghana to a rousing welcome by some members of the New Patriotic Party, had his freedom short-lived by Ghanaian security officials.

He is reportedly being investigated for obtaining a fraudulent passport, sources say.

He was escorted to the offices of the Narcotic Control Board (NACOB) for a debriefing session and will be handed over to the police.

Ghanaian Times earlier reported that a NACOB source had indicated that the procedure of filling the form was not peculiar to Amoateng alone, adding that it was a general guideline that every deportee on drug offences was supposed to follow.

The ex-legislator who represented the Nkoranza North constituency on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) arrived in a Delta Airline flight at exactly 1.30 pm at the Kotoka International Airport to fans, who wielded placards some of which read: "Cocaine or No Cocaine, we love U Amoateng."

He was arrested on December 11, 2005 for illegal possession of 136 pounds of heroin in the United States. The street value of the drugs was about $6 million.

The convict was then sentenced to a 10-year jail term by a US court presided over by Judge David G. Tragger on December 12, 2007.

Amoateng's seat became vacant and so, the then Speaker of Parliament, Ebenezer Sekyi-Hughes, directed on January 30, 2007, that the question of Amoateng's long absence from parliament be revisited.