Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko
Accra-based private legal practitioner, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, has dragged Revalap Publishers & Suppliers Ltd, publishers of Ghana Palaver newspaper, to court for publishing what he claims are libelous stories against him.
The pro-National Democratic Congress (NDC) newspaper had in its Tuesday, September 12, 2017 edition, alleged that ‘unimpeachable sources indicate that controversial Finance Minister and cousin of President Akufo-Addo, Ken Ofori Atta, has packaged a juicy contract and given it to a law firm founded by his equally controversial nephew, Asare Otchere-Darko, popularly called Gabby.’
The paper claimed that Gabby’s law firm had been contracted by the finance minister to review all agreements and contracts entered into by the ministry for the past 15 years – a publication Gabby has flatly denied.
He is, therefore, demanding damages.
He is also demanding from the court ‘an injunction restraining the defendants and each of them, whether by themselves, their servants, or agents or otherwise, from further publishing or causing to be published the said or similar words defamatory of the plaintiff.’
The writ, filed by the plaintiff’s lawyer, Kissi Agyebeng of Cromwell Gray LLP yesterday, pointed out that unless the defendants were restrained they would make good their intention or threat to publish further stories libelous about his client.
In an attached document upon which the plaintiff intends to support his claims, the newspaper is said to have published falsehood which were intended to, according to him, “increase sales and circulation of the Ghana Palaver,” benefits of “which outweigh any compensation payable to the plaintiff.”
The plaintiff indicated also that the said story was accorded front page treatment with the pictorial depiction of him.
Continuing, he said the defendants were persistent and emphatic as to the purported undesirability and dishonesty of the plaintiff.
In their natural meaning, the words used in the said publication, according to the legal team, suggested that “the plaintiff is a member of a scandal-prone family and he was in cahoots with the Finance Minister of the Republic to fleece the Republic of $20 million or GH¢100 million.
“The plaintiff is an odious and contemptible person who engages corruption of/and with public officials” who also runs a “shady and sleazy law firm,” among others.
The plaintiff states that the words used in the story are false and products of the defendants’ imagination calculated to disparage him.
“His reputation as a lawyer has been damaged and he is by this fact suffering debilitating distress and embarrassment, not forgetting numerous calls from enquirers,” Gabby’s counsel averred.
