A future National Democratic Congress (NDC) government will reopen investigations into alleged acts of corruption and graft in the Cecilia Dapaah case.
Former President John Mahama revealed this in a post on Twitter on Thursday, May 2, 2024.
My government will reopen investigations into alleged acts of corruption and graft in the Cecelia Dapaah case.
— John Dramani Mahama (@JDMahama) May 2, 2024
This follows the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice advising EOCO against initiating money laundering investigations into the case of former Sanitation Minister Cecilia Dapaah.
Upon a request for advice by EOCO on the matter, the AG's office, in a letter dated April 25, 2024, stated that the OSP did not submit the report on its collaborative investigation with the FBI to EOCO.
Additionally, the AG's office noted that the OSP had not responded to EOCO's request for its findings when it investigated the Minister.
According to the Attorney General's office, the docket presented to EOCO only contains the OSP’s letter transmitting the docket, the diary of action, statements taken during the investigation, and letters written by the OSP to other institutions like the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and banks for inquiries.
“In the absence of the identification of any criminality associated with the properties retrieved from the suspects, the OSP’s referral to EOCO for investigations to be conducted into money laundering is without basis.”
“Even though as part of your mandate you can commence investigations into source(s) of the money found in the home of the suspects, we do not find this necessary since the Office before the reference by the OSP, had instructed the Police Service who are already seized with other aspects of the case to investigate the source(s) of the huge sums of money found in the home of the suspects, a fact the OSP is aware of. “
Background
The OSP commenced investigation in July 2023 in respect of suspected corruption and corruption-related offences regarding large amounts of money (mainly in foreign denominations) and other valuable items involving Ms. Dapaah, her spouse, Daniel Osei-Kufour.
This came after the pair reported huge sums of money stolen from their residence by their employees.
The charges recounted that between July and October 2022, the accused persons allegedly stole valuable items from the residence of Ms Dapaah and Mr Osei-Kufour at Abelemkpe in Accra – including cash amounts of $1,000,000) and €300,000.
Following several court proceedings, the Special Prosecutor directed full investigation into corruption and corruption-related offences involving the Ms Dapaah who was the Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources at the time.
On July 24, 2023, the Office placed Ms. Dapaah under arrest on charges of corruption and corruption-related offences and subsequently conducted searches in three residential properties associated with her and the spouse.
The searches led to the discovery of the cash sums of $590,000.00 and GH₵2,730,000.00.
From October 2023, the investigation became cross-border and transboundary upon the claim by the persons of interest that part of the seized cash sums was transported to Ghana from the US.
As a result, the FBI became involved in a collaborative investigative work with the OSP aimed at determining the source of the money.
Following seven months of in-country and four months of collaborative transboundary investigation, gathered evidence and intelligence, it seems to us that the case is largely in the province of suspected money laundering and structuring.
In a statement on January 25, Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng stated, “The case has been referred to EOCO because its investigations show that the case has to do with money laundering, and the office has the mandate per the constitution to look into such matters.”