Sedina Tamakloe
The nation was divided yesterday when the Court of Appeal acquitted and discharged former Chief Executive Officer of Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), Sedina Tamakloe-Attionu, setting aside the 10 years’ jail term handed her for stealing and causing GH¢93 million financial loss to the state.
The court, in its 94-page judgment on an appeal filed by the ex-John Mahama appointee, held that the prosecution failed to lay sufficient evidence in proving the charges levelled against her.
The court further, without mincing words, criticised their colleague judge, Justice Afia Serwah Asare-Botwe, then a High Court judge, for the way she handled the case, stating that she shifted the burden of proof onto the accused rather than the prosecution as the law demands.
The appellate court’s decision expectedly split opinion, with many questioning the court’s reasoning, while others agreed it was proper.
The whereabouts of the GH¢93 million the nation is said to have lost through the actions of the accused is one question many observers are demanding answers to.
Although the Attorney General has issued a statement indicating a disagreement with the Court of Appeal’s decision and a desire to pursue the matter at the Supreme Court, there are many who think it is nothing but a ploy to shift attention from the real questions being asked about this government’s promise to fight corruption.
Declared Fugitive
Tamakloe-Attionu had been in the United States since 2021 after failing to return to Ghana to face trial, after she was granted permission by the court to travel for medical checkup. The court had to declare her a fugitive.
She was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in absentia for allegedly bloating contracts and spending part of relief funds meant for victims of the Kantamanto fire outbreak.
Tamakloe-Attionu was also jailed for pocketing an amount of GH¢500,000 invested by MASLOC at Obaatanpa Microfinance Company Limited which was returned to MASLOC because of the high interest demanded, but the money never reflected in the accounts of the Centre.
She was arrested and detained in the United States in January 2026, and was subsequently extradited to Ghana after a court found that the information presented to it by the Ghana Government and its US counterpart “is competent evidence to establish probable cause that Tamakloe-Attionu committed the crimes with which she is charged and has been convicted.”
An interdicted Operations Manager of MASLOC, Daniel Axim, was also sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for the same offence, for his role in the alleged looting of state funds.
Appeal
Her lawyers filed an appeal arguing that her conviction and sentence for offences including conspiracy to steal, stealing, causing financial loss to the state, improper payment of public funds, money laundering, among others is “unreasonable and cannot be supported having regard to the evidence on record.”
The appeal also argued that the High Court erred in convicting Ms. Tamakloe-Attionu on the charges levelled against her, and that the charges were defective.
Decision
A three-member panel of the Court of Appeal, Justices Emmanuel Ankamah (presiding), Samuel Obeng-Diawuo and Emmanuel Senyo Amedahe, in their decision agreed with Tamakloe-Attionu’s lawyer that the charges levelled against her are “incurably deficient” as they omit an indispensable ingredient of the offence.
Taking the charge of conspiracy to cause financial loss to the state for instance, the court held that the particulars are materially indistinguishable as they do not identify the conduct by which Tamakloe-Attionu and Daniel Axim are alleged to have agreed to act together, the relevant date, nor the specific loss said to have flowed from that agreement.
The court said it was not convinced the accused received the GH¢500,000 from Obaatanpa Microfinance Company Limited but did not return same to MASLOC, noting that “if receipt of the sum was not proved, dishonest appropriation of that sum could not follow.”
On the allegation of Tamakloe-Attionu stealing GH¢1,816,000, notwithstanding that approval had been given for GH¢1,706,000.00 for sensitisation and monitoring programmes for selected beneficiaries across Ghana in 2015 and 2016, the court held that the prosecution failed to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Tamakloe-Attionu and Axim did not apply the funds to the projects.
“In requiring the Appellant to demonstrate that the project did occur, the learned trial judge again impermissibly shifted the evidential burden contrary to law and as affirmed in the Ato Forson case,” the court said.
The court, therefore, held that based on the analysis of the facts and applicable law regarding the offenses of conspiracy to steal and stealing, the convictions and sentences for all counts of conspiracy to steal and stealing against Tamakloe-Attionu must be set aside.
On the charge of money laundering, the court said there was no evidence Tamakloe-Attionu authorised an improper payment of GH¢164,038.28 to herself as ex gratia and another GH¢109,705.38 to her deputy as ex gratia “by deception, misrepresentation, or the presentation of false documentation to the Head of Finance.”
The court, therefore, held that the conviction and sentencing on all the charges including those manifestly defective charges cannot stand, and subsequently acquitted and discharged her.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak