The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has refuted claims that it cleared former Sanitation Minister, Cecilia Dapaah, before transferring her case to the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO).
The OSP investigated Mrs Dapaah for alleged corruption and corruption-related offences after reports emerged that their domestic staff stole millions of local and foreign currencies, along with other personal effects belonging to the former minister and her husband.
After months of investigation, the OSP closed its case and handed it over to EOCO, citing that the offence largely fell within the realm of money laundering.
The OSP stated that it may reopen the case if further evidence supporting corruption investigations is uncovered.
However, EOCO sent the OSP’s transferred docket to the Attorney General’s office for advice on whether to conduct investigations. The AG’s Office advised EOCO to halt investigations, stating that the file lacked an investigative report and additional documentation to support a money laundering prosecution.
The AG also mentioned that the police are investigating the source of funding by Cecilia Dapaah, suggesting that there was no need for EOCO to continue with the case.
In a separate statement, the Attorney General’s office accused the OSP of failing to provide EOCO with sufficient information regarding its collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) for further investigations.
In an interview with Joy News, the Director for Strategy, Research, and Communications at the OSP, Mr. Samuel Appiah Darko, clarified that his office did not clear Cecilia Dapaah of corruption-related offences.
He explained that the OSP closed its investigation after determining that the offence was largely related to money laundering.
Mr. Darko also noted that Dapaah could not reasonably explain all the seized monies from her home, as her explanations were found to be untrue after investigations.
He maintained that EOCO did not request the FBI investigation report, despite joint representatives from the two agencies working on the file transfer.
“We want to make it very clear that EOCO did not request for the FBI report. Even if they did, the FBI report has a lot of confidentiality clauses that were directed particularly to the OSP and you can’t just give it to another agency because you have transferred the case. There ought to be a lot of inter-agency collaboration and clearance. So if it had happened, we may have triggered the clearance clauses so that either we are cleared by FBI or FBI sends the report directly to EOCO.”
He stated that the OSP referred the case to EOCO, providing all relevant documentation, including caution statements from over 20 suspects in America, Accra, and Kumasi.
Additionally, other information, such as relatives of Madam Dapaah claiming the seized monies and some jewelry in her house were family heirlooms, was also provided. These documents were intended to assist EOCO in conducting its own independent investigation into the financial transactions involved.
“The OSP should be considered as a whistleblower to EOCO. So as a whistle-blower, we gave EOCO platinum information. Ordinarily, you will not even find other agencies giving such information to EOCO,” Mr. Darko noted in the interview.
The OSP’s Director for Strategy, Research, and Communications gave further reasons on why his outfit referred the case to EOCO instead of proceeding with the alleged money laundering probe.
“Our referral is not just in respect of a transaction in America. Also, we were not conducting money laundering investigation, we were conducting corruption investigation. We are of the opinion that, we had all it takes to send that referral to EOCO because there was no way we could have proceeded and then investigated and write a report on money laundering and send it to EOCO for onward transfer to the Attorney General. We only referred a matter to EOCO as whistle-blowers for EOCO to investigate…We cannot instruct EOCO on what they should do,” he added.