There were fireworks yesterday at the Chief Justice’s committee investigating the judicial service staff implicated in the Anas Aremeyaw Anas bribery and corruption scandal when a lawyer requested that Anas be unmasked.
Sources say Egbert Faibille Jnr, lawyer for Gabriel Achana, one of the clerks indicted in the scandal, had asked the two other hooded men who usually accompanied Anas to the committee to go out and leave the ‘real Anas’ behind.
This, the lawyer argued, was to enable the investigative journalist to unmask for the much anticipated cross-examination.
This follows the watching of the video by the said court clerks, most of whom are expected before the committee chaired by Avril Lovelace Johnson, a justice of the Court of Appeal.
Intervention
But DAILY GUIDE source stated that the committee held that the two other hooded men were also representatives of Tiger Eye PI and could not excuse the committee in that regard.
The committee further contended that Anas could not be unmasked because he was protected under the Whistleblowers’ Act and was also covered by immunity.
Walk-Out
Probably incensed by the position of the committee, Mr Faibille walked out of the committee sitting with his client.
Mr Faibille is, however, said to be heading to an Accra high court to seek an order to compel the undercover investigative journalist to reveal his real identity.
Over 180 staff of the judicial service were allegedly caught on camera taking bribes and demanding sex to influence judgments or acting as middlemen for some judges.
Some of them are said to be so well connected that one cannot see a judge without going through them.
Other members of the panel are Derrick Annan; John Bannerman, Chief Registrar of Courts; Nana Opoku Asumani, Secretary; Patricia Quansah, a Circuit Court Judge and Frederick Baidoo, Deputy Director of Human Resource of the Judicial Service.
Judicial Scandal
Anas’ private investigative company, Tiger Eye PI, conducted a two-year investigation which produced a 500-hour video depicting 34 judges and magistrates, more than 100 court clerks, seven policemen, five state attorneys and bail contractors engaging in bribery and extortion.
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Date | 23rd October, 2015
Source: Daily Guide
