Cecilia Dapaah Fights OSP

Cecilia Dapaah 

 

Former Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Dapaah, has filed an affidavit in opposition to an application filed by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), seeking an order of confirmation of the monies seized in her home as well as confirmation of the freezing of her bank accounts.

Madam Dapaah, in her affidavit in opposition, describes the OSP’s application as “absurd, grounded on false allegations and brought in utmost bad faith and brazen disregard of Act 959 and the early ruling of the High Court dated August 31, 2023”.

It further avers that the OSP has not demonstrated that there is any basis to suspect the money found at her home are from a corrupt source or that the funds in her bank accounts are tainted property or the proceeds of corruption or corruption-related offences.

The OSP arrested Madam Dapaah on July 24, 2023, on suspicion of corruption and corruption-related offences after she and her husband, Daniel Osei Kuffuor reported huge sums of money was stolen from their home by their two house maids.

The OSP then administratively froze the bank accounts of the former minister and filed an application before an Accra High Court seeking to confirm the $590,000 and GH¢2.86 million seized at her home as well as the freezing of the accounts pending further investigation into the true ownership and source of the monies.

An Accra High Court presided over by Justice Edward Twum, however, dismissed the application indicating that based on the available facts before it, there was no justifiable basis for the authorised officers of the OSP to exercise the powers of seizure without a court warrant or order.

The OSP subsequently released the funds to Madam Dapaah and also lifted the freeze on the accounts, but later seized the money and again froze the accounts and subsequently filed another application seeking confirmation of the seizure and freeze.

The OSP’s repeat application alleges, among others that the former minister was engaged in undisclosed and undeclared real estate business under an alias but was receiving the proceeds of transaction in her bank account.

Again, it alleges that the former minister received money transfers into her Prudential Bank Account from her deceased brother, as early as September 19, 2022, when the said brother was said to have died in January 2022.

Opposition

But Madam Dapaah in her affidavit in opposition avers that on September 5, 2023, when the OSP re-seized her funds and refroze her bank accounts, she and her husband were not being investigated for and had not been charged with any identifiable offence known to the laws of Ghana and which are broadly described as corruption and corruption-related offence under Act 959.

She denied the allegation that she owned a real estate business, indicating that “I have no real estate business and Applicant (OSP) has not provided a scintilla of evidence that I do.”

She also denies an averment by the OSP that she concealed her identity by using aliases to sell property to third parties when the OSP’s own exhibit “shows that I rather sold properties in a representative capacity for Nana Yaa Ode. Nana Yaa Ode, also known as Nana Ode Nyarko was my mother (now deceased).”

On the allegation of receiving money transfers into her Prudential Bank Account from her deceased brother, Madam Dapaah avers that an account in the name ‘The Late Nana Akwasi Essan’ which she is signatory to, was opened at Cal Bank with funeral donations collected by the bank at her late brother’s funeral.

“The correct account name is conspicuously stated in applicant’s Exhibit OSP18 and the applicant could easily have ascertained the mandate on the account from Cal Bank. The funds are transferred to me for payment of the school fees of my late brother’s children,” Madam Dapaah avers.

She further denies allegation that she and her husband did not inform the police about the discovery of $590,000 which formed part of the initial $1 million reported stolen “when we informed the investigating officers on 25th July, 2023, a fact that good faith and diligent investigations would have unearthed.”

“Applicant (OSP) has failed to consider that the funds in my accounts include my earnings from various past employments, pension, and treasury bill investments among others, which cannot be tainted property by any stretch of the imagination,” she stated.

She also avers that in confirming a freezing order, the court is enjoined to balance the economic right of the affected persons against the state’s power to fight corruption and in this case, granting the OSP’s application would be unwarranted and will cause her undue hardship.

“Having failed to satisfy the statutory conditions precedent for applying to confirm the seizure of and freezing orders of the sums found at my home and in my bank account respectively, this Honourable Court must dismiss this application with punitive costs for abuse of the court’s due process,” Madam Dapaah adds.

Meanwhile, the former minister has through her counsel filed an application for abridgement of time seeking the court to hear the application earlier than the October 18, 2023 it was scheduled for. That application would be heard today.

BY Gibril Abdul Razak