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| Amoateng Admits "Pushing Drugs" |
4/11/2007 |
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... to be sentenced on June 6
.On April 5, the Enquirer newspaper reported that Ex "Dishonourable" Member of Parliament (MP) for Nkoranza North Constituency, Eric Amoateng, had replaced his "NOT GUILTY" plea with a "GUILTY" plea to charges of conspiracy to import heroine into America. On April 6, Dennis Adjei-Brenyah, Counsel for Amoateng denied that his client had pleaded guilty. Documents obtained by the Ghana Palaver indicates the Ex MP has indeed pleaded guilty to the charges.
Last year November, Adjei-Brenya of New Hampstead, New York, visited Ghana at the invitation of the government, to present a statement from the disgraced former MP. In the statement, Mr. Amoateng said "I affirm before my nation that the allegations against me is false. I have not done anything wrong. I emphatically and categorically deny the charges leveled against me. I pray to God that in due time and soon all the facts will come out and I would be totally exonerated".
This year, in March 2007, the disgraced former MP has eaten back his November 2006 words and has now pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to import heroine into the United States of America. According to court document received by the Ghana Palaver from the United States of America, Amoateng would be sentenced on June 6, this year at 3 pm American time.
Judge Roanne L Mann, presiding Magistrate accepting Amoateng’s plea said "in pursuant to Federal Rule LL of the criminal procedure, a finding has been made that the plea was made knowingly and voluntarily and the plea was not coerced". Amoateng on March 19, told the American court that after discussing the matter fully with his counsel, he has decided to enter a plea of GUILTY.
Judge Mann has accepted Amoateng’s plea. Readers will recall that ever since his arrest some two years ago, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) led by the President John Agyekum Kufuor, has never acknowledged the guilt of their member of parliament and had always maintained that he was innocent of the charges. It took the government and parliament almost two years to accept that there was no way the disgraced MP was going to come back an honourable man, before his Nkoranza North constituency seat was declared vacant.
This was after all effort by the then Attorney General, Nana Akufo Addo, to place before Parliament a bill that would allow for the exchange of Ghanaian cocaine prisoners from all over the world had failed.
source: Ghana Palaver
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