Martin Amidu suspends staff for leaking documents

The Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu has taken disciplinary action against one of his staff, PW/D. Sgt. Yaa Boakyewaa, for leaking confidential information and documents to unauthorized persons.

According to Mr. Amidu, he has handed her an indefinite suspension.

This was captured in a letter addressed to the IGP and sighted by Citi News.

In the letter explaining the basis for her suspension and call for her removal from the office, Martin Amidu insisted that the officer in question showed gross insubordination and impudence in his presence when she was marched to his office to sign a letter of receipt of her suspension letter.

“She continued rudely and very insubordinately and had the impudence to tell me in the presence of the Deputy Special Prosecutor, the Secretary to the Office, the acting Head of the Investigations Division, and a senior officer of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) that I had no right to address her as a Sergeant when she had been promoted to an Inspector.”

Martin Amidu in the document said after indicating to Sgt. Yaa Boakyewaa that the IGP had not communicated her supposed promotion formally to him, she “gave me a good dressing down and threw the letter on a table in my office.”

Last week, a list of 25 cases supposedly being pursued by the Office of the Special Prosecutor went viral on social media, with some persons named in the cases raising objections about their culpability in the said cases they were named in.

Although the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Office of the Special Prosecutor, Mrs Ofori-Kwafo denied that the list was authentic, it was widely reported in the media with some expressing regret that such a list would leak from the office.

But Martin Amidu indicated in the documents submitted to the IGP over the incident gave indications that the list was fake and creation of PW/D. Sgt. Yaa Boakyewaa.

His letter to Sgt. Yaa Boakyewaa requesting that she explains why she shouldn’t be reprimanded for the conduct said: “none of the files in the memorandum were petitions submitted to this Office as you falsely and maliciously presented them to be.”

“By virtue of your conduct in converting purely confidentially collected intelligence by this Office which had not been discussed “with the Special Prosecutor for any further action” into petitions received by the Office, you facilities or leaked or enabled the divulging of those intelligence collections of this Office to persons not authorized to receive them while creating the impression that the collected intelligence constituted petitions received by this Office from the public,” Martin Amidu indicated in the letter to the embattled office.

‘Sgt. Yaa Boakyewaa morally unfit for my office’

Martin Amidu revealed in his letter to the IGP, which was also copied to President Akufo-Addo, the Interior Minister, Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff (Operations) and the Secretary of the OSP, that he had discovered that the said officer had in the past been involved in a sex tape controversy.

“…that did not make her a fit and proper person of integrity and morality to have been seconded to this Office whose mandate requires that exhibition of the highest degree of morality, integrity and honour.”

He, however, said the BNI is vetting Sgt. Yaa Boakyewaa as expected by the Special Prosecutor Regulations, 2018 and he was waiting for the official report from her vetting.