How 'minister' Cecilia Dapaah ran real estate company with 'fake identity' - OSP details

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 seizure of some monies it had seized weeks back 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 had 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.”

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.”

Relating the findings to the original case where her two house helps are said to have stolen a million dollars, and hundreds of thousands of monies in euros and Ghana cedis; the OSP said there was no evidence of the source of the stolen funds.

“There are no financial records and traces of the origin(s) of the money reportedly stolen from the residence of the respondents and the money discovered by the OSP at said residence.

"Further, there is no evidence of the amounts of money having been derived from any legitimate businesses, profession or vocation, and no evidence of said amounts having been lawfully declared and subjected to any statutory payments.

“During the search conducted in her presence, the first respondent disavowed and claimed no knowledge of the presence of the said cash sums in the residence. The conduct of the first respondent, being a public officer, heightened the suspicion of the authorised officers of the OSP that the cash sums were tainted property.”

The OSP unfreezed 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.



SARA

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