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Private legal practitioner Bobby Banson says the Office Special Prosecutor’s second attempt to seek a court confirmation of the tainted properties of the former Sanitation Minister, is to enable it to conduct a more thorough investigation.
He said Kissi Agyabeng would then come out with a charge(s) against Cecilia Dapaah.
This comes after the Special Prosecutor initiated a second attempt to confirm the seizure of suspected tainted properties belonging to Madam Dapaah.
Not long ago, the OSP seized millions of cash from the sacked Minister and ordered the freezing of some bank accounts with over ¢40 million transactions.
An Accra High Court refused to confirm the seizures and freezing order claiming that the OSP had filed out of legal time and directed the OSP to return the amounts to Cecilia Dapaah.
The Special Prosecutor complied but immediately seized the properties for a second time.
He is back in court seeking to get the seizure confirmed this time with additional documents disclosing among other things that the former Minister has an undeclared real estate business and has been receiving huge sums of money from the bank account of her long-deceased brother.
Commenting on the OSP’s latest action, Bobby Banson said the OSP is within his legal rights to attempt a second confirmation of seizure.
“Procedurally he can still have a second bite at the cherry because the application that he filed was not dismissed on the merit to that extent. I think the judge mainly rested his decision on the fact that he had filed out of time.
“Two, in such matters, a court does not become functus officio in delivering what may generally be called interlocutory decisions so that the court has not finally determined whether Madam Cecilia Dapaaah is guilty of all the allegations that the OSP is throwing at her.
“You know at this stage, OSP is seeking a confirmation order to enable the OSP to continue its investigations. So it is not as if those charges have been brought against her by the OSP yet,” he said.
He further explained that the additional documents and revelations brought forward by the OSP are to enable him to establish a prima facie case against the former Sanitation Minister and do not constitute a charge.
“At this stage, the OSP has not yet charged but is asking for confirmatory orders to enable the office to complete their investigations and then proffer the necessary charges.
“So everything that the OSP has deposed through in the affidavit in support of this application is an attempt to establish what the lawyers will call a prima facie case to demonstrate that the OSP’s seizure of the account is not something that is fanciful, that is being done without any merit;
“And that he thinks that on the face of the document he has or on the face of the preliminary investigations he has conducted, there is sufficient evidence for him to suspect that if he probes further he may have more evidence to proffer charges against madam Cecilia Dapaah,” he explained.
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