Is the Economic and Organized Crime Office Now the Umpire for Corruption in Ghana?

Abstract

The Economic and Organized Crime Office, (EOCO) is an agency designed to address critical national security and public health challenges. These include organized crime activities, official and institutional bribery and corruption among others. Despite this mandate, EOCO appears to have lost the ability to police the economy of Ghana in the face of rampant reported and actual cases of massive corruption in government institutions and agencies. This paper poses the perplexing question as to whether EOCO has already agreed to play the umpire role as official and institutional corruption insidiously becomes the new national sport, pervasive and ubiquitous. Under EOCO law, it is designed to operate on hunches and suspicions; it is to develop its eavesdropping and spying skills so as to be able to apprehend the wrong doer before he/she completes the commission of the malfeasance. It appears the mere suspicion, the mere hunch that a crime is about to be committed or is being committed seems to be enough probable cause to deplore the police and subpoena powers on the suspect and correlative persons as provided for in the Second Schedule to L.I. 2183 of the EOCO Operations. The Act and the LI are more concerned with sophisticated crimes, and aim to engage in pre-crime interventions, espionage of certain classes of people in civil society and continuous monitoring. To realize these ends, they are given extra-judicial powers such as search and seizure of personal communications and effects without the production of a warrant guaranteed by the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. It is therefore vexatious that corruption has taken over the image of Ghana in quick step against unprecedented swooping powers given to EOCO to breach; for the public good, the civil and constitutional rights of companies and citizens bent on committing serious crime.