The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) has confirmed that its officials, together with staff of the Lands Commission, went to a Tema property belonging to Bernard Antwi Boasiako, the jailed Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), on Monday, November 9, 2026. According to Graphic Online, EOCO said the purpose was to record the site's coordinates and measurements so that a professional valuation could be carried out. The office rejected accounts in some media outlets that described the visit as a ransacking of the premises.
In a statement dated the same day, EOCO said the trip formed part of due process after it froze the property, a step it said was affirmed by a court in 2025. The office stated that the Lands Commission needed the technical details gathered on site to work out what the property is worth. It added that the whole exercise took less than ten minutes, passed without incident, and did not involve officers disturbing items in the building.
Why it matters
The statement is EOCO's attempt to draw a line between a routine valuation step and the more dramatic picture painted in parts of the media. Several outlets had reported that officers descended on the Tema home, with some accounts saying family members were left upset. EOCO's version, as carried by Graphic Online, is that nothing of the sort happened and that the public should disregard those publications.
The dispute matters because it touches on how an asset freeze is carried out in practice. A freeze is a legal restriction on a property, and valuing the asset is a normal part of the process that follows. If the public understands the visit as a raid, confidence in how the office handles such cases can suffer. EOCO's decision to issue a same-day statement suggests it sees the distinction as worth defending.
What EOCO says the visit involved
According to the statement, the team was made up of EOCO personnel and Lands Commission officials working together. Their task was to obtain the coordinates and measurements of the property so the Lands Commission could determine its value. EOCO framed this as technical groundwork rather than enforcement action, and said the visit was strictly for valuation purposes as part of the processes attached to the frozen property.
The office also gave a firm denial of the ransacking claims, calling that description false. It did not, in the statement, address every detail raised in the earlier reports, but it was clear that it wanted the record corrected on the central point: officers came to measure, not to search or remove anything.
A property already frozen by court
The background EOCO supplied is that the property was frozen by the office and that a court confirmed the action in 2025. That confirmation is the legal footing on which the current valuation rests. The statement does not set out the reasons behind the freeze or the wider case in which it arose, and this report does not speculate on them.
What the statement does make plain is sequencing. The freeze came first, the court confirmation followed, and the Monday visit is a later administrative step tied to establishing the asset's worth. EOCO presented the visit as one link in that chain rather than as a new or separate operation.
Conflicting accounts in the media
The coverage that prompted the statement came from several outlets. Asaase Radio reported that EOCO officers had turned up at the Tema home and that the family was angry about it. 3News described officials searching the house. Yen News went further, reporting that officers had raided the home and that children were reportedly left in tears. CitiNewsroom, by contrast, reported that EOCO had denied raiding the residence and said the visit was for valuation.
Graphic Online's account, built on EOCO's statement, sides with the valuation explanation. The gap between the two sets of reports is wide: a ten-minute measurement exercise on one hand, a search that reduced children to tears on the other. EOCO has asked the public to set aside the second version.
Who is involved
Bernard Antwi Boasiako, widely known as Chairman Wontumi, is the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the NPP. The source material describes him as incarcerated; it gives no further detail on his custody, and none is added here. The property at the centre of the dispute is in Tema, in the Greater Accra Region, and belongs to him, according to the reports.
The other institutional party is the Lands Commission, which EOCO says joined the visit in a technical capacity. Its role, as described, was to gather the data needed to put a value on the land and buildings. EOCO itself is the state body tasked with investigating and prosecuting economic and organised crime, and it is the office that froze the property.
The legal thread running through the case
Asset freezing sits at the intersection of criminal procedure and property rights, which is why the details of each step tend to be contested. EOCO's statement leans on the court's 2025 confirmation to show that the freeze is not merely an administrative decision by the office. The valuation, in turn, is the kind of step that typically precedes decisions about what happens to a frozen asset.
Nothing in the material indicates what the valuation is for beyond establishing worth, and no figure has been disclosed. The statement also does not say whether further visits or assessments are planned. Readers should treat the absence of those details as gaps in the public record rather than as hints of anything more.
What to watch
The immediate question is whether the outlets that reported a raid will correct or qualify their accounts now that EOCO has issued a formal denial. Beyond that, watch for any word from EOCO or the Lands Commission on the outcome of the valuation, and for any statement from Chairman Wontumi's side responding to Monday's visit.
