A Deputy Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Alfred Tuah-Yeboah, has called for a holistic review of the current public declaration law, insisting it contains some “shortfalls”.
Mr Tuah-Yeboah said it is the same representatives of the people who did away with the PNDC Law 280 for the Public Office Holders (Declaration of Assets and Disqualification), Act 550, and so they had an intention to protect themselves.
He recounted how the 1969 Constitution espoused public declaration of assets albeit for a limited group of officers and how it was expanded in later laws.
He, however, observed that the current defects can only be rectified by the same Parliament which did away with latest law on asset declaration, PNDC Law 280.
“That’s the price we have to pay for democracy,” he said.
“They went to Parliament and realised that there was the need to pass the law that will not make it possible for you to publish the declaration for people to know.”
Mr Tuah-Yeboah made his thoughts known while contributing to discussions at the National Dialogue hosted by TV3.
The National Dialogue on Thursday, October 12 was on the theme: ‘Fighting Public Sector Corruption in Ghana: Making A Case for an Effective Asset Declaration Law’.
For the Deputy AG, fighting corruption, in the first place, is not an easy task.
“If you look at corruption itself, you feel it is a very difficult disease we can fight and it is a cancerous tumour that if you want to uproot, you need a lot of effort.”
Proxy ownership
He cited how some public officers are circumventing the law to get away with wealth acquired with public funds.
He stated, for instance, that these public office holders acquire wealth in the name of relatives, terming it ‘proxy ownership’.
“Because if you are a bad person, what you will do is that declare A, B, C and D but now I am not going to acquire anything in my name,” he explained.
“I will have someone that I will acquire the property in his name and at the end of the day if you want to verify whether I have used public funds to acquire property illegally, you cannot get me because it may be in the name of my uncle, my wife’s sister, my wife’s brother, A, B, C and D.
“That’s also another real challenge,” he bemoaned.
He, therefore, insisted, “That’s the reason why we need to review that Act and when we review, it will go back to them and remember they are also part of the people who are supposed to declare their assets.”
He ultimately called for “a debate that we have to look at holistically”.
Also speaking virtually on the programme was the former Auditor General, Daniel Yao Domelevo, who recommended a “lifestyle audit” of citizens.
He said these will ‘arrest’ all those who are beneficiaries of ‘proxy ownership’.
With this, Mr Domelevo explained that people can be randomly interrogated on the source of their wealth.