The Accra High Court has ordered the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) to provide some investigation documents to former sanitation minister Cecilia Abena’s former house help regarding the alleged stolen funds case.
The said documents include an investigation caution and a charge statement by the former minister and her husband.
Lawyers of Patience Botwe, a former house help of Cecilia Dapaah and her husband had filed an application requesting the afforementioned documents on the basis of their relevance to their defence. According to reports, Patience’s legal team had requested same documents under the Right to Information (RTI) Act but were denied by the OSP, which claimed information from the sought documents were exempt.
Displeased by the OSP’s response, Patience beseeched the intervention of the Accra High Court. In its defence of refusing to make available the documents, the OSP argued that the request was premature, adding that the court’s jurisdiction was also improperly invoked.
Citing its inexpungible power to ensure a fair trial, the High Court presided over by Justice Marie-Louis Simmons overruled the OSP’s argument.
She underscored the importance of making available the documents to Patience Botwe by citing Article 19(2)(e)(g) of the 1992 Constitution, which establishes an accused person’s right to prepare a defence.
Justice Simmons stressed that making available the requested document is necessary for Patience’s legal team’s cross-examination of the former minister and her husband. This, she based also on the discrepancies in the minister’s and her husband’s accounts on the alleged stolen funds.
In effect, the court has given the OSP a week to provide the sought documents.
What is the case about?
Last year, the former minister for Sanitation reported her house help to the police for allegedly stealing huge sums of money from her bedroom. The amounts stolen were $1 million and an additional 300, 000 euros.
The minister became the subject of discussion, as the public was in disbelief that a minister could make such an amount from her job. Political and finance experts questioned the motive of stashing such amounts of monies at home when it could be in the bank.
With pressure from the public and many civil society organisations, the matter was transferred to the OSP for thorough investigation. Upon further investigations, it was later discovered that the minister had more money stashed at home, which raised money laundering and corruption suspicions. The minister’s accounts on the source of the sums of monies were considered inconsistent.
Meanwhile, having indicated through a press statement that it did not find any immediate and direct evidence of corruption related to the former minister’s funds, the OSP referred the issue to the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), an outfit responsible for handling money landering case.
“After nearly seven months of extensive investigation by the OSP and a parallel inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States, no direct and immediate evidence of corruption has been found in the seized funds and frozen bank accounts linked to Ms Dapaah and her associates,” the statement said.
However, the Attorney General who doubles as the Minister for Justice, Godfred Dame raised concern that the OPS’s scope of investigation for which the case was transferred to the EOCO on the basis of money laundering was quite limited. According to the AG, the OSP’s investigation was restricted to purported fund transfers from the United States.
“The public must understand clearly that the OSP only gave a narrow remit to EOCO to investigate for money laundering in respect of the funds that were allegedly transferred into the country.”
“So clearly, the OSP indicated that it is specifically in relation to the sums that were alleged to have been transported into Ghana from the United States of America that should be the subject matter for the money laundering investigation. The money laundering investigation is clearly linked to those transfers,” he said.
Source: Dehotpress
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