The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has discontinued all legal action against former Sanitation Minister, Cecilia Dapaah.
The cases related to a confirmation order from the courts to have the former minister’s seized assets remain frozen while it investigated her for corruption. The second was related to Ms. Dapaah’s failure to respond to a notice served on her to declare her income and property.
Announcing at a press conference earlier today, Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng said after having found that the case predominantly falls on money laundering and not corruption, his office cannot probe further as it lacks the mandate to do so.
“From October 2023, the investigation became cross-border and transboundary. Upon the claims by the persons of interest that part of the seized cash sums was transported to Ghana from the US, for that reason, the FBI became involved in collaborative investigative work with the Office on the matter. On the totality of the gathered evidence, it seems to us that the case is largely in the province of suspected money laundering and structuring,” Kissi Agyebeng said.
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The former Minister will now be investigated for suspected money laundering and structuring by the Economic and Organised Crime Office, following the transfer of the case.
“The Office will be in close collaboration with EOCO and the FBI,” Agyebeng added.
The court has also directed that the OSP returns the remaining seized assets of Ms. Dapaah within 3 days.
Ms Dapaah has been under investigation since July 2023 following news of a reported theft by her domestic staff. The domestic workers were alleged to have stolen large sums of money – with many reports alleging amounts of $1 million, 300,000 euros, several millions of Ghana cedis, and personal effects.
The case has raised serious questions about the sources of her wealth – more so because many were shocked to learn that a minister was holding huge amounts of foreign currency to herself.
