Ato Forson Ambulance Trial: Franklin Cudjoe takes on Dame over justification for not accepting €2m plea bargain

The Founder and President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has slammed the Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Godfred Dame, for his justification for not accepting the €2 million plea bargain offered to the state in the ambulance trial of the Minority Leader, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson.

Cudjoe, in a post shared on Facebook on August 7, 2024, said that the Attorney General must be prosecuted for wasting the country's resources by his insistence on going on with the trial.

He asserted that not only has Dame’s decision led to the country losing money, but it has also dented the image of the country in the eyes of the international community.

“This high school playground bully must be prosecuted for wasting our time and money. You lost the contrived case in court and lost us the €2 million pledged. My colleague Bright Simons detailed in an article recently, this boy has done incalculable financial and reputational damage to Ghana with just this needless ambulance case,” he wrote.

The IMANI boss added, “I don't blame him. Such characters that know not the value of money were given such roles to simply mount vindictive persecution of innocent people with our taxes. Such a shame.”

What Dame said:

The Attorney General refuted the accusation that he has caused financial loss to the state by not accepting the €2 million plea bargain in the case against Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson.

Godfred Dame was accused of causing financial loss to the state after the Court of Appeal threw out his case against the Minority Leader because one of the parties in the trial offered to pay the state €2 million for the case to be dropped.

Godfred Dame charged Dr. Ato Forson and businessman Richard Jakpa with causing financial loss to the state in the procurement of 200 ambulances during the government of John Dramani Mahama. Big Sea, the company that supplied the ambulances, offered to pay the government of Ghana €2 million so that the case would be dropped, but this was rejected by Dame.

Speaking in an interview on Asempa FM on July 31, 2024, the Attorney General explained that he could not accept Big Sea’s offer because it was not one of the plaintiffs in the case, and he would not be able to hold them accountable if they failed to pay the €2 million after the case was dropped.

“The plea-bargaining proposal made it clear that the case was not frivolous and that the accused persons themselves were concerned about the case. The plea-bargaining proposal was made by the third accused (Richard Jakpa), and later on, the first accused wrote a letter saying that he had no objection to the plea-bargaining and all that.

“But I’m saying that if I accepted the plea bargain in the manner it came, Ghanaians would say that I have gone for money and so on. The offer was that the company that was not a party to the case, Big Sea, was going to be the one that was going to pay the money, and that the case would be ended - I should throw in the towel and end the prosecution. So clearly there was no direct offer from the accused persons, there was also no direct admission of liability, and they were hiding behind the Big Sea company in Dubai, which is not a party to proceedings in Ghana,” he said.

He added, “If I had accepted this, I am sure you would be questioning my integrity, and if subsequently Big Sea had defaulted, how would the accused persons be held responsible? If Big Sea did not pay, how would I justify it to the people of Ghana?”

The Attorney General further stated that even though the accused persons were interested in the proposal by Big Sea, it was more of a trap for him.

View Franklin Cudjoe's post below:



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