Why EOCO’s attempted arrest of Baffour Awuah was wrong - Lawyer explains

A private legal practitioner, Anane Agyei Lenin, has outlined the legal grounds on which he believes the attempted arrest of Manhyia South MP, Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, by an Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) officer was unlawful. The attempted arrest on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, led to a confrontation between the lawmaker and a female officer who identified herself as an EOCO official and asked him to accompany her to honour an invitation from the agency. High Court issues warrant for arrest of Manhyia South MP Baffour Awuah Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile, Lenin first argued that EOCO’s Act does not make it a criminal offence if an individual refuses to honour an invitation from them. He cited sections of the Act to support his argument, where he explained that Section 19(1) empowers the Executive Director to compel a person to provide or produce documents, while Section 19(5) makes failure to comply with such a directive an offence. “It does not say anything about a refusal to honour an invitation… on that score, the failure of Baffour Awuah to respond or to, as it were, attend the invitation, even if he so did, would not have been a basis for EOCO to attempt to arrest him in any sort of manner,” he explained. For his second argument, Lenin said the attempted arrest was also flawed because EOCO did not have an arrest warrant and, in his view, the conditions for making a warrantless arrest had not been met. He referred to Section 10 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1960 (Act 30), which sets out the circumstances under which a person can be arrested without a warrant. “Section 10 of Act 30 clearly spells out that for you to effect a warrantless arrest, you must show that either the person is committing an offense, or that there's reasonable suspicion that the person is about to commit an offense in your presence, or there's already an existing warrant for an offense the person has committed,” he said. He argued that none of these conditions applied to Baffour Awuah at the time of the attempted arrest and that subsequent statements that came from EOCO showed the invitation was actually addressed to SIC Savings and Loans and not Baffour Awuah personally. “Now, in all of these instances, Honorable Baffour Awuah did not satisfy any of these conditions, and the subsequent statements of EOCO bear us out that even the subject of the invitation that had been sent was not him. It was SIC Savings and Loans. “So, on the second ground, that there was no arrest warrant, and also that the conditions spelled out in the Act for a warrantless arrest to be effected did not exist, that also makes the arrest flawed beyond saving,” he argued. The legal practitioner also made the third argument that EOCO’s power to arrest does not automatically apply to every employee of the agency. He explained that the EOCO Act allows the agency to exercise the arrest powers of the police under Act 30, but only officers designated by the Executive Director can exercise those powers. He further cited EOCO’s regulations, LI 2183, which provide for two types of identity cards for its officers. According to him, one of the cards identifies the holder as an EOCO officer with police powers and serves as authority to perform those duties, while the second card does not carry such authority. Lenin said this was why Baffour Awuah’s request for the officer to identify herself and show her authority to arrest him was important. “When Honorable Baffour Awuah asked, ‘how do I know you are from EOCO?’, he's not only asking you to identify yourself as an officer of EOCO, but he's also asking for you to show that, within the remit of the law, you have the authority of the Executive Director to exercise the arresting powers that are conferred on the Executive Director under Section 10 of the EOCO Act, and that is why the failure of the officer to identify herself and produce that identity card is crucial,” he stressed. Baffour Awuah reports himself to EOCO The Manhyia South MP is reportedly being investigated over alleged unauthorised financial transactions at SIC Life Savings & Loans Company Ltd. The investigation concerns suspected offences including financial loss, dissipation of public funds and money laundering. MAG/VPO Inside Ghana’s Abandoned Engineering Powerhouse: What Went Wrong? Source: www.ghanaweb.com
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