Special Prosecutor Clashes With Dubious Court Order To Unfreeze Sir John’s Loot

Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, has vowed to press forward with a process to have the assets of the late former Chief Executive of the Forestry Commission, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, frozen as part of a corruption investigation.

The vow was contained in a statement released Tuesday after an Accra High Court dubiously dismissed an application by the OSP to have a freezing order on the assets, including swathes of state lands and huge sums of money in multiple bank accounts, confirmed.

Expressing disappointment in the decision of the judge, the OSP said she misconstrued the request for a freeze of the assets to an application for confiscation, something that the OSP never did.

“On this reckoning, the Special Prosecutor has directed the filing of an appeal against the ruling of her ladyship Justice Afia Serwaa Asare Bot we,” parts of the SP’s statement read.

It would be recalled that in May this year, it emerged that Sir John, had willed several acres of state lands, including some at protected ecological sites at the Achimota Forest Reserve and the Sakumono Ramsar site, to his relatives.

The bequeath was contained in the late Forestry Commission boss’ will which also contained revelations that the man had had huge sums of money in bank accounts both in Ghana and abroad.

Most of his wealth was acquired starting from 2017 when the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration took over the reins of Ghana’s governance in what has reportedly turned into the most corrupt government in the history of Ghana.

Naturally, Sir John’s blatant state capture generated a public uproar and this prompted the Special Prosecutor to launch an investigation, as part of which an application to have Sir John’s assets frozen to enable investigations to be duly conducted into his estate.

On May 3, 2022, the SP directed the freezing of the estate. Then on June 9, 2022, the SP applied to the High Court for a confirmation of the freezing order.

But on 12th July 2022, the High Court presided over by Justice Afia Serwaa Asare Botwe inexplicably dismissed the application saying it was baseless because it was a request to confiscate the estate of Sir John.

According to the SP, the judge “misdirected herself” with the interpretation she had given the application.

“The judge, with respect, totally misapprehended the application for confirmation of the freezing order and misdirected herself by characterising the application as that of a confiscation order, which regimes are governed by different considerations,” the OSP said.

He added, “The net effect of the ruling of the High Court is that a person may, in his lifetime, gleefully acquire property through corruption and then upon his demise happily pass on the corruptly-acquired property to his beneficiaries for their benefit.”

The rift between the OSP and the courts is re-echoing criticisms that Ghana’s courts have been compromised by corrupt judges who simply validate acts of theft by public officials.