Charles Bissue
Counsel for Secretary of the defunct Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Charles Bissue, yesterday demanded the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) to provide him with copies of the documents that form the basis of investigations against him.
Nana Adjei Awuah, who was expected to move an application seeking to restrain the OSP from investigating his client, told an Accra High Court that he was unable to do so if “all the relevant facts and evidence” are not made available to the court.
“After we filed our suit and the motion for injunction, the necessity of the document we seek, became apparent because of an article by the former Special Prosecutor. It was not as though we knew of it from the outset that we failed to raise it,” he told the court.
Mr. Awuah added that, “It is the document that commenced the whole investigation process. It is the document that invoked the powers of the Special Prosecutor to investigate the applicant. In other words, but for that petition, very respectfully, he will not even be in court.”
Dr. Isidore Tuffuor, lead counsel for the OSP, disagreed with his opposing counsel’s assertion and argued that there is no relationship between the documents Mr. Bissue is requesting and the motion for injunction for which they were before the court as there was no mention of such documents in the substantive case.
“This application for injunction is founded on the statement of claim. The applicant’s case is determined by his pleadings. And these pleadings informed the injunction. In his pleadings, there is absolutely nothing referring to the document he is seeking the first defendant to produce,” he argued.
He indicated that if after filing the case and Mr. Bissue came across some other piece of information that he seeks to make part of his case, they know what to do.
“You cannot file a motion to produce. There is really nothing that joins the two motions,” Dr. Tuffuor added.
The court, presided over by Justice Olivia Obeng Owusu, adjourned the case to July 4, 2023, on ground that Mr. Awuah had indicated he was unwell and not because of the claim that the motion could not be moved unless the OSP provides Mr. Bissue with the documents demanded.
Mr. Bisue is seeking an order prohibiting the OSP from investigation him because, according to him, the subject of the probe had already been investigated by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Ghana Police Service.
His lawyer argues that once the police had concluded their investigation into the purported corruption documentary, any investigation and prosecution of the same matter would amount to a review of the investigation and findings already done by the police.
The OSP last week secured a court order for the arrest of Mr. Bissue, after he failed to honour an invitation by the Office.
His lawyer, has, however, indicated that he will not be turning himself in to the OSP because “if the court was privy to certain facts including but not limited to pending suits and motions for interlocutory injunctions, it would not have granted or made an order for that arrest.”
BY Gibril Abdul Razak