OSP referral of Cecilia Dapaah case to EOCO ‘legal nonsense’ – UK Lawyer

A private legal practitioner based in the United Kingdom, Kofi Opare Hagan, has critiqued Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng over the referral of the Cecilia Dapaah case to the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO).

According to the lawyer, the referral of the case involving the former Sanitation Minister, Cecilia Dapaah, to EOCO, suggesting that the funds were tainted, is incorrect.

The lawyer argued that "the entire referral was nonsensical from the beginning."

There has been a public dispute between EOCO and the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) regarding the case referral and investigations.

EOCO has strongly denied accusations made by the OSP about its alleged reluctance to investigate Cecilia Dapaah.

Samuel Appiah Darko, Director of Strategy, Research, and Communications at the OSP, recently revealed that EOCO had returned Cecilia Dapaah’s case file, implying disinterest in pursuing the money laundering charges against her.

In an interview with Bernard Avle, host of the Citi Breakfast Show on Citi FM, Mr. Darko stated that EOCO's claim of intending to return the case file was inaccurate, as the document had already been returned.

However, EOCO has vehemently disputed the OSP's claims, describing them as an "undue misrepresentation of facts" in an official statement.

Reacting to the situation, the UK-based lawyer argued that the referral was legally incorrect and nonsensical.

Read the lawyer's full post below:

By referring Cecelia Dapaah to EOCO for money laundering investigations, the OSP implicitly suggested that the funds recovered from Dapaah were tainted.

Under Section 79 of the OSP Act, property, including money, is considered tainted if it has been (a) used in connection with the commission of an offence or (b) derived, obtained, or realized as a result of the commission of a corruption or corruption-related offence.

If the OSP genuinely believed that Cecelia Dapaah was involved in money laundering, then, without needing to refer to EOCO, he would have had jurisdiction to seize that money under Section 32 of the OSP Act on the basis that the money was tainted property.

Given that money laundering is a crime, any 'laundered' money would have been 'used in connection with the commission of an offence', and thus would have become tainted property.

The definition of tainted property includes both property obtained from specified corruption and corruption-related offences, as well as property used in the commission of 'an offence'. This refers to any other offence incidental to the commission of a corruption or corruption-related offence, such as money laundering. The drafters of the law deliberately used 'offence' in relation to the first part of the definition of tainted property and then used the more specific term 'corruption and corruption-related offence' in relation to the second part.

Therefore, the entire referral was nonsensical to begin with.