Six people have been arrested and released on bail in connection with last month’s killing in Ghana of an undercover journalist who exposed a high-ranking official at FIFA as corrupt, police said on Friday.
David Eklu, director general of police public affairs, said the arrests on Thursday were “preliminary arrests based on reasonable suspicion.â€
Police did not identify any of the suspects. Eklu said there was “no strong evidence for now.â€
Another three people, including the now-banned FIFA official Kwesi Nyantakyi, were previously questioned as police sought information in the killing of journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale. Hussein-Suale was shot dead by two gunmen on a motorbike while driving near his home in Accra on Jan. 16, a killing that shocked a country considered one of the most stable democracies in West Africa.
The killing, called an assassination by the media house Hussein-Suale worked for, immediately raised speculation that his work exposing high-level corruption and the threat of match-fixing in soccer might be the reason behind the shooting. Hussein-Suale was shot twice in the chest and once in the neck at close range while driving in the Madina suburb. He died immediately, according to police.
Hussein-Suale set up the undercover television sting that showed Nyantakyi, then a member of the FIFA council, accepting $65,000 in cash from reporters posing as unethical businessmen and promising to use his position as the head of Ghanaian soccer to secure favourable deals for them.
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Nyantakyi was found guilty of bribery, corruption, and conflict of interest in a FIFA ethics investigation prompted by the documentary. He was banned from soccer for life last year having already resigned from his roles as president of the Ghana soccer federation, as vice-president of African soccer, and as a member of FIFA’s top panel.
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Hussein-Suale worked for the Tiger Eye PI media house run by Anas Aremeyaw Anas, a renowned Ghanaian investigative journalist who has used undercover television documentaries to expose graft and organized crime in Ghana and across Africa.
The 2018 documentary that brought down Nyantakyi also exposed wider corruption and the threat of match-fixing in Ghanaian and African soccer. The film showed dozens of referees from across Africa taking money from the undercover reporting team, allegedly in return for promises they would help fix games in the future.
