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Some appointees of the previous government who have been accused of taking double salaries may walk free when police investigations are concluded, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako has signaled.

According to the Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, independent checks he had conducted suggest "a few" of the named former appointees are innocent of the offence; stealing.

There are, however, some who would struggle to mount a defence against the charge if found culpable, he added.

“To be honest if the police does a professional job some of them may turn out innocent…,” Baako stated on weekly news analysis programme Newsfile, on Saturday, April 21, 2018.

 
“There are few that it will be difficult to sustain any defence on their behalf and this comes out of the fact that if you look at the quantum of what they claim to be top up, it obviously couldn’t be,” the veteran journalist told host, Samson Lardi Anyenini.

Some appointees in the erstwhile John Mahama administration who were at the time Parliamentarians, are being investigated for drawing their salaries on the accounts of the legislature while at the same time, being paid by the Comptroller General.

Mr. Baako noted: “Double salaries, if it turns out to be true and in some few cases what I have seen, [could be] very disturbing and those people may have a difficulty in defending themselves.”

The Defence Minister, Dominic Nitiwul who is also Member of Parliament for Bimbilla, shares a similar view.
 
According to him, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Police Service has been conducting investigations into the matter for over half a year and must have gathered enough evidence before inviting the affected persons for questioning.

“The police have been doing investigations for this double salary thing for the past six months and I know that for a fact,” Nitiwul stated.

One of the affected opposition MPs, Mahama Ayariga, who maintains innocence, sees the move as a calculated attempt to cause public disaffection for the former appointees and divert attention.

“They are matters that the government has decided to use to divert public attention and create the intention of criminality…,” Ayariga argued.