Legal Practitioner Lawyer Maurice Ampaw has stated that there must be a law that mandates every Ghanaian to declare their assets because that is the only way to fight corruption in the country.
This comes on the back of a recent divorce suit filed by the wife of the Communications Director of the Presidency of Ghana, Mrs Gloria Assan Arhin over what she calls “marital negligence and abnormal amassing of wealth”.
Details of the suit which have been leaked on social media suggest that the Communications Director, Eugene Arhin had “nothing” before his appointment to the presidency but after four years of working as Director of Communications, Mr Arhin has been able to amass unexplained wealth.
According to Lawyer Ampaw, even though Eugene Arhin doesn’t fall under the article 71 which mandate public office holders to declare their assets prior to their appointment, the only way to curb financial malfeasance in the country is to pass a law that will require every citizen to declare their assets.
“We must have a law which says that when you are Ghanaian and your wealth is unexplained, the state agency should be interested in knowing your assets, that’s the only way we could fight money laundering in the name of the state and other government officials. We could even fight cybercrimes because some of these officials use the names of these fraud people to do evil things without people knowing they are behind it, you will see a small boy who doesn’t work but drives in a car and building big mansions and the system is quiet because he is not a public officer. One day this boy will sell Ghana,” he said.
He further stated that “the law should not only be limited to Article 71 officeholders because the politicians could even be using some of these fraud boys to hide their assets because these people normally do the biding for politicians but when the boy is pushed to the wall, that’s where you realize that probably the properties don’t even belong to him but a politician and that’s what the state must start doing for people to account for their wealth”.
Meanwhile, a court document indicates that “the respondent (Eugene Arhin) shortly after his appointment as the Director of Communications started behaving in very unusual ways towards the Petitioner (wife) and the children and continued on this path until the relationship between the parties deteriorated completely.”
The document revealed that “the marriage between the parties has for the past about four (4)years suffered irreparable damage and setbacks and all the efforts by the parties and their families at amicable resolution have all failed.”
The document added that Mr. Arhin has on several occasions unequivocally informed his wife that he is no longer interested in the marriage, adding that he has moved out of the family residence, leaving his wife and children alone.
