The Director of the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), Biadela Mortey Akpadzi, has responded appropriately to concerns expressed over his outfit's detention of those implicated in the Ghana Youth Employment & Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) report.
Reacting to an earlier publication in the Chronicle newspaper that an Accra-based Legal Practitioner, George Tetteh, had challenged the authority of the EOCO to have detained several individuals indicted in the report, Mr. Mortey Akpadzi defended his outfit, stressing that the EOCO is vested with the authority to arrest and detain culprits.
The concerns of the Legal Practitioner came on the heels of what he described as "abusive treatment meted out to some of his clients from the Ashanti Region, who were implicated in the recent Ministerial Committee report on the Ghana Youth Employment & Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA)."
He was "worried about the nature of the operations of EOCO, which according to him, appears to dehumanize and curtail the freedom of persons invited before them.
"According to him, there was lack of clarity in the mode of operations of the unit as persons summoned before it are subjected to emotional trauma and infringement of their human rights, including arrest and detention," as published in the Wednesday's edition of the Chronicle.
The individuals invited by the office since the investigations began were reported to have been allegedly detained and made to provide sureties before their release.
But speaking in an interview with Radio Gold, the EOCO Boss believed it lay in their bosom to ensure that they apprehend any person indicted by the report.
According to him, the EOCO has "full powers of arrest and detention for not more than 48 hours and subsequently presenting the one to court if need be. As much as possible, we arrest and grant bail��
He however disclosed that the indicted persons were also put on bail in accordance with the Act governing the activities of EOCO.
This, he said, was done in a combined effort with the Ghana Police Service.
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