Listen to Anas Aremeyaw Anas' True Spies Podcast: Veil of Beads, the Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful
Anas Aremeyaw Anas doesn’t dare show you his face because if he does it may be the last time. The Ghanaian journalist’s life is at risk. One of his colleagues was killed in 2019 and Anas fears he too is a hunted man, wanted for shining a light on corruption at the highest levels.
In Tanzania, he posed as a man interested in the business of killing Albino children, using a hidden camera to film the suspected murderers. Anas also sensationally infiltrated an Accra psychiatric ward to expose hospital staff selling cocaine to patients and he revealed kickbacks and corruption in soccer right up to a member of the FIFA council, the top of one of the most powerful sporting organizations on the planet.
His focus on human rights and anti-corruption in West Africa and beyond has made Anas a rising star in journalism but it has also made him a target. He wears beads as a veil during public appearances so his face remains obscured. Anas isn’t sorry to find himself living such a dangerous life, just cautious.
“Journalism is like a hot kitchen. If you don't have the ability to stand the heat, you get out,” he told the SPYSCAPE True Spies podcast. “It's difficult but who said we thought journalism was going to be a tea party?”
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Listen to Anas Aremeyaw Anas' True Spies Podcast: Veil of Beads, the Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful
Anas Aremeyaw Anas doesn’t dare show you his face because if he does it may be the last time. The Ghanaian journalist’s life is at risk. One of his colleagues was killed in 2019 and Anas fears he too is a hunted man, wanted for shining a light on corruption at the highest levels.
In Tanzania, he posed as a man interested in the business of killing Albino children, using a hidden camera to film the suspected murderers. Anas also sensationally infiltrated an Accra psychiatric ward to expose hospital staff selling cocaine to patients and he revealed kickbacks and corruption in soccer right up to a member of the FIFA council, the top of one of the most powerful sporting organizations on the planet.
His focus on human rights and anti-corruption in West Africa and beyond has made Anas a rising star in journalism but it has also made him a target. He wears beads as a veil during public appearances so his face remains obscured. Anas isn’t sorry to find himself living such a dangerous life, just cautious.
“Journalism is like a hot kitchen. If you don't have the ability to stand the heat, you get out,” he told the SPYSCAPE True Spies podcast. “It's difficult but who said we thought journalism was going to be a tea party?”
Born in the late ‘70s, Anas’ career started in Ghana, a West African country that is part of the British Commonwealth. He was a young reporter with a scoop. Police were taking bribes from street hawkers so he went undercover as a seller to gather hard evidence. It was the start of a lifetime spent naming, shaming, and - whenever possible - testifying against targets to ensure they go to prison.
“Journalism is about results,” Anas said. “It's about affecting your community or your society in the most progressive way.”
Risk may be the name of the game for spies, but journalists are not trained in the darker arts. So how does Anas cope when he finds himself in life-and-death situations?
Anas wears beads during public appearances to hide his identity
A journalist in disguise
Anas once awoke strapped to a gurney in a psychiatric ward. His first thought? “Okay, I'm still here. I'm alive. Now, how do I get my cameras in?”
Anas’ girlfriend had told him about malpractice at a psychiatric hospital in Ghana’s capital, Accra - a hospital with abusive staff, thieves, and frightened patients. At the center of it all was a ring of drug dealers. Anas wanted a closer look, but first he’d need a cover story. In this case, he faked a mental illness and convinced a doctor he needed to be committed. It’s not a method recommended for amateurs, but Anas is an old hand at the art of disguise.
“I have done some investigations where I was completely disguised as a sheik from Saudi Arabia. I've also done some rocky disguises, in the Northern part of Ghana, where I was painted to be part of a rock, to monitor some people who were carrying drugs,” he told True Spies. “Apart from that, of course, played roles in being undercover in prisons, becoming a lawyer in many other countries, and becoming a woman. So it's a mixed bag.”
In the Accra psychiatric hospital investigation, however, he was locked in with little to no chance of escape if things went wrong. This was new territory so Anas assembled an outside backup team, including his girlfriend who was reachable via a cell phone Anas smuggled into the psychiatric ward
He also hid a camera in his Walkman when Anas set out to find the hospital’s cocaine syndicate, led by a charismatic orderly named Carter. A deal was struck. Anas tested the drugs in front of his dealer, made his excuses, and left knowing he’d caught the entire exchange on camera. It transpired that the network of drug-dealing orderlies was just the tip of the iceberg, however.
The psychiatric hospital investigation was just one in a long line of close shaves. Anas has also teamed up with other reporters to highlight atrocities, including an exposé on witch doctors from Malawi who were telling businessmen that if they wanted to get rich, they’d need to kill someone. For a price, the witch doctors offered to help arrange the murders.
A reporter named Henry Mhango had been digging into the story but Mhango was relatively new at investigations so he turned to Anas for help.
“My parents were saying, ‘No, my son. The moment you explore this story, then you put us in danger. The moment these people have recognized that you are the one pursuing this story, they will kill you,’” Mhango told True Spies. Like Anas, he wasn’t deterred from putting his life in danger for the greater good.
The witch doctor story wasn’t just about the murders, Anas said, “But also the societal story of how the government can neglect a group of people who have complained that, ‘Our kids are going missing. Our siblings are being murdered.’… And yet the government turns a blind eye to it.’
Anas traveled 2,000 miles from his home in Accra to help Henry gather the evidence they’d need to force change - risking their lives at the hands of a violent mob along the way.
When Anas’ decided to investigate corruption in soccer (known in Europe and Africa as 'football'), he knew people would fight back - there was a lot of money at stake - so Anas needed to anticipate how to forestall or outwit his enemies. “Football is a very important component of the average African, the average Ghanaian because football cuts across the rich and the poor. Football is what unites the country together for a common purpose,” he explained.
But how do you quell an unknown danger? First, Anas and his team took precautions as they set up the sting. In this case, that meant hiding in plain sight.
“We meet at very public and busy places because if they are trying to shoot, you have a lot of difficulty in aiming,” Anas told True Spies.
Precautions may not have been enough, unfortunately. One of the men Anas worked with, journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale, was shot dead near his family home in 2019. Ghanian police believe the murder was linked to his work as an investigative journalist. “It was a sad day for us. A sad day for me, especially when I got the information that we were the two people targeted,” Anas said.
FIFA World Cup 2010 quarter-final between Ghana and Uruguay
Anas Aremeyaw Anas: Tiger Eye
At the time of his death, Ahmed was well known to the reporting team. Henry Mhango and Ahmed bonded when they worked on the witch doctor killings investigation in Malawi. Ahmed was soon Anas’ right-hand man at Tiger Eye, the investigation company Anas started to handle the sheer quantity of stories that he was being asked to do.
Tiger Eye learned that corrupt football referees had strict rules about who they would do business with. In order to infiltrate the circle, they went underground posing as members of the supporters’ union who wanted to contribute money toward the success of their beloved club. They quickly sensed the scale of corruption among the country’s referees and took the investigation up a notch.
Football sting
“You could even buy a yellow card. You could buy a red card. You could decide how many goals you want in a particular match. You could fix a match. You could do anything once you had the money,” Anas told the SPYSCAPE True Spies podcast, The Beautiful Game.
The corruption wasn’t limited to the referees or just Ghana. Anas and his team went undercover as sheiks in Dubai in a football investigation that lasted two years and took a great personal toll on all of the team, Anas said: “We were getting threats from everywhere, everywhere from the local to the middle, to the divisional, to Africa, to the world, we were getting threats.”
Ahmed’s shooting death was a very difficult loss for the team but it has also spurred Anas on, ensuring that he carries on with his life’s work exposing human rights abuses and corruption for the betterment of society.
“Any time we were working in difficult environments Ahmed would say, “Boss, what we are doing is almost service to God,” Anas recalled. “So I want to assure you that if you are killed today, we are not going to give up. We are going to soldier on.”
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