There is nothing wrong with concealing money in your home - NPP communicator ‘defends’ Cecilia Dapaah

The former Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Abena Dapaah, continues to dominate conversations on both mainstream and social media.

The OSP, according to a myjoyonline.com report, told the Accra High Court how they discovered a large sum of money stashed in the home of the embattled former Minister of State.

The OSP furthered that there were amounts of money concealed in polythene backs, wraps, clothes, and envelopes and hidden in obscure places at the residence of Cecilia Dapaah.

This action convinces the OSP that there is more to be desired when it comes to the source of Cecilia Dapaah’s money, and hence, it is seeking the court's permission to refreeze the properties of the former minister for thorough investigations.

However, a leading member of the communications team of the New Patriotic Party, Awal Mohammed, has rushed to the defence of Cecilia Dapaah.

The NPP communicator explained that there is nothing wrong with an individual deciding to keep or store money in his or her home.

The NPP politician submitted these when he appeared on the September 20 edition of TV3 Newsday.

“There is nothing wrong with concealing monies in your home. There is nothing wrong. When you portray the picture as if there is something wrong with putting money in your house, no. There is nothing wrong with that. I will not put my money in my room. You remember when this issue broke out, I came here and I said I was not happy.

"Because, at the time, we were on TV and radio telling people, that at least send your dollars to the bank. It was almost the same time that the dollars were stolen from her home, and I was not happy. But when you portray it as if you put your money in your home, you’ve done something wrong. That is absolutely wrong,” Awal said.

Background

The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) reapplied to a High Court in Accra, seeking an order to freeze some bank accounts and a confirmation of the seizure of some monies it had seized weeks ago from the residence of embattled former sanitation minister, Cecilia Dapaah.

Multiple local media portals have cited an 8-page court document in which the OSP spells out a number of discoveries it made relative to the seized funds, which amount to about US$590,000 and over GH¢2.8 million in cash.

The OSP shone light on a number of businesses the former minister was supposedly into, which businesses, it said, she used as part of the defence she has allegedly mounted in terms of the source of some of the monies in her home.

“The OSP’s criminal intelligence further suggested that the first respondent, as a Minister of State, was engaged in an undisclosed and undeclared real estate business in which she obscured and concealed the transactions by employing the use of aliases to avoid detection of the actual ownership of the business and properties, while cleverly receiving the proceeds of the transactions in her bank accounts and investments.”

There is nothing wrong with concealing your money in your house - Awal Mohammed on the Cecilia Dapaah cash saga.#TV3NewDay pic.twitter.com/VQeqemReOs

— #TV3GH (@tv3_ghana) September 20, 2023

The document also revealed that “criminal intelligence suggested that the first respondent had unexplained large cash sums of money (far above her income as a Minister of State) secreted and stashed up in her residence and that her house-helps had allegedly helped themselves to part of said sums of money through larceny.”

The OSP also unfroze the former minister's accounts and returned her properties as directed by the court on August 21; the office complied and refroze them again before putting in the current application.

A hearing has been slated for October 18, 2023.

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