Senior and highly experienced lawyers have warned the Special Prosecutor (OSP) of a plot by some lawyers who have been promoted to the bench to sabotage his efforts to combat corruption by dismissing the majority of the cases he brings before them.
Mr. Kissi Agyebeng expressed concerns about the courts’ “growing hasty dismissiveness and lack of regard” for corruption charges during a press conference on Wednesday, November 29, 2023.
A High Court ruled on Monday to invalidate an OSP report that accused Joseph Adu Kyei, a former Deputy Commissioner of the Division, and Col Kwadwo Damoah, a former Commissioner of the Customs Division at the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), of using their positions to give the frozen food company Labianca Company preferential tax treatment.
In November 2022, Damoah and Kyei sued the OSP, claiming that the report was unfounded and had damaged their reputations.
The OSP was fined GH₵10,000 by the court, and they were also given a restraining order that stopped them from looking into the two more.
Mr. Agyebeng has observed a pattern in the judges who are sitting on the OSP’s cases dismissing them, and if the pattern persists, he has warned of grave ramifications for the fight against corruption.
“Indeed, I have had several calls from well-meaning lawyers admonishing me that they have heard talk that our friends who have been elevated to the bench and presiding over cases in court, do not take very kindly to criticism, especially of the public-calling-out variety, as we do”, he told journalists on Wednesday, 29 November 2023.
He continued: “And that if the office persists in the media releases, the judges will gang up against the office and throw out all our cases”.
“Mind you, members of the press, collective admonishing is from very senior and experienced lawyers who are members of the law”.
“Members of the press, my learning of the law for the past 25 years in three different jurisdictions, my teaching and training of lawyers and law students for the past 17 years, my 20-year record at the bar all bear testimony that I will be the last person to lead an institution to attack the judiciary”.
“It will be absolutely of no good should it be the case that the OSP is set against the judiciary or that the judiciary is against the OSP. That will surely spell disastrous consequences for this republic, especially in the fight against corruption to the amending glee of corrupt persons”, he warned.
Referring to the ruking in the Labianca case, for instance, Mr Agyebeng warned: “The danger of this startling decision is again quite obvious. A judge has, in the process, granted two persons immunity from investigation and in effect immunity from prosecution”.
“This decision opens up a calamitous deluge as every person under criminal investigation will be encouraged to take out suits to injunct investigation and prosecution bodies from investigating and prosecuting them,” he said.
“I do not intend to sound as though I’m predicting doom but we are facing it, and this is it. With this development, it will not be long, a suspected murderer or armed robber will boldly walk to court with the unthinkable prayer that the court should injunct law enforcement agencies from investigating him.”
