The Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Mr Emile Francis Short, has promised that the commission will assert its independence and neutrality in the investigation of the Mabey and Johnson (M&J) bribery scandal involving some top Ghanaian officials.

He dismissed concerns that CHRAJ might be influenced by the Government, considering the fact that it was the President who invited the commission to take over investigations into the scandal. He also allayed fears that the commission would be depending on information gathered from London recently by the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.

“That had never happened and it will not happen,” he assured the nation through the Daily Graphic at the weekend, adding that the commission would not compromise its independence and neutrality under any circumstance.

President Mills last Friday accepted the resignation of the Minister of Health, Dr George Sipa Adjah Yankey, and a Minister of State at the Presidency, Alhaji Seidu Amadu, who were cited in the bribery scandal, and referred the matter to CHRAJ.

Mr Short confirmed that the President spoke to him personally on telephone last Friday to inform him about the Government’s desire to refer the case to CHRAJ before making that intention public.

He said the Government might have changed its initial position to let the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice investigate the matter, because perhaps, it did not want the exercise to be dismissed as whitewashing.

“It could be that the President wants the truth to be unravelled by an independent body,” he said.

While commending the Government for its decision to refer the matter to CHRAJ for investigation, Mr Short said the commission had already begun its own investigations into the matter before the Government requested it to do so.

He said CHRAJ had already written to the British High Commission in Accra, requesting for assistance to get information on the case.

He indicated that the commission was also making efforts to contact the UK Serious Fraud Office, the UK court that handled the case and M&J to obtain full information on the bribery allegation.

“We will try and obtain as much facts as we can to take a decision on the matter,” he said.

Furthermore, Mr Short said, the commission would seek audience with the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, who followed up on the case to London, for more mfom1ation to facilitate its investigations.

Although CHRAJ’s investigation is embryonic, many people are anxious to know when it would be concluded, but Commissioner Short parried the question when it was put to him, saying the number of persons to be investigated will depend on the evidence we lay our hands on”.

He said the commission also had to determine witnesses for the investigations, adding that “not until we know all these things, we cannot tell the time to conclude our investigation”.

CHRAJ, in the 1990s, passed the test of maintaining its independence and neutrality when it investigated some Ministers of State under the previous Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration and recommended the prosecution of two of them after establishing adverse findings against them.

However, the Government later issued a White Paper rejecting the findings of the commission.

The M&J case, in which some Ghanaian top officials were alleged to have been bribed by the UK construction firm which operated in Ghana in the 1990s, provides yet another test case for CHRAJ and the Government in their collective resolve to fight corruption.

Source: Daily Graphic

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