The Communications Director of the Ghana Football Association, Ibrahim Saanie Daara, has sued investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, for allegedly defaming him in the #Number12 video which captured alleged corruption in Ghana football.
The suits are in two parts – one for defamation, and the other for invasion of privacy.
In his writ, Saanie Daara is asking the court to order Anas to pay him an amount of GHc20 million for damages the said video has caused him.
Anas and his Tigereye PI team published and showed a video in June 2018 which captured top officials of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), and over 70 referees in supposed acts of corruption.
Saanie Daara, who was also captured in the video according to Anas, refused to accept the money given to him, but directed that the money be given to a man standing close to him, alleged to be his [Saanie Daara’s] colleague.
This amount according to the narration, was to get Saanie to influence a player’s call-up to the Black Stars, but in that video, Saanie explained to the team that a player’s call-up was solely the prerogative of the coach, and it also dependent on the player’s performance.
Mr. Daara has denied the claims by Anas,explaining that the said individual in the video was not his colleague, and that he was a member of Anas’ team who was used to achieve their aim, hence his resort to the High Court to clear his name.
“Please let me be emphatic that I met them alone with no colleague of mine. The next person standing to me was Acquah who is no colleague of mine. He was brought by Anas to set me up. They blurred his face. If they claim he is my colleague they should have shown the face or mentioned his name in the least” Saanie told citinewsroom.com.
In his writ, he insisted that it was rather Anas and his agents who “offered me an undisclosed sum of money in an envelope which they described as ‘something’ and which I turned down in all honesty.”
Mr. Daara described Anas’ action as “a grossly unethical manner when he and or his agents engaged in pure subterfuge by intruding my privacy and secretly recording me in the name of fighting bribery.”
“….in the overall circumstances of my encounter with the respondents and or their agents, I had a legitimate expectation of privacy as the secretly recorded conversation itself not touching on the commission of a crime, was never meant to be broadcast to the world at large without my consent.”
Reliefs:
Mr. Daara described Anas’ video as “defamatory of his character” and asked the court to order Anas “to publish an unqualified retraction and an apology with the same prominence the defamatory words received within 14 days after the judgment.”
“An order of the honourable court for perpetual injunction restraining the defendants, their agents, assigns and servants from further publishing any defamatory words against the plaintiff,” he added in the writ.
–
By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citinewsroom.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin