Lawyers’ Boss Under Fire Over Judicial Corruption

An Accra-based legal practitioner has questioned the integrity of the President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Frank Bechem, and suggested that he is not serious about his promise to investigate and weed out the corrupt elements within the Judiciary Service, at the recent GBA Conference in Elmina.

Mr. Chris A-Ackummey, the legal practitioner, specifically accused Mr. Bechem of playing mischief with the festering cancer of judicial corruption and also pandering to the caprices of Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood.

In a letter dated October 19, 2011, Mr. A-Ackummey questioned the GBA President whether the corruption case involving the Circuit Court judge of Kpando and Swedru, as reported by The Herald on Monday, “does …not merit same treatment as in the case of Magistrates Miss Aklamasu and Kugblenu,” who were sacked recently from the bench for corruption.

The judge, Richard Aseidu-Bedu, formerly of Cape Coast Circuit Court in the Central Region succeeded in defrauding a 36-year old businessman of the sum of ¢420 million (old cedi), after honouring a promise to financially influence a Swedru-based judge, Nathaniel K. Osam, to set free the businessman’s half-brother Mark Addokoh, who had been arrested and charged for a traffic offence.

Mr. Aseidu-Bedu, who was once interdicted over a gold fraud-related case, collected GH¢ 600.00 from the businessman, Eric Aidoo, in June last year to bribe his colleague judge, Mr. Osam to set free his brother. It was after getting Addokoh freed, that he took GH¢42, 000 from Mr. Addo, under the guise of a loan.

Chief Justice Wood through, Mr. D.B. Afari, the Administrator of the Public Complaints and Court Inspectorate Unit, only wrote to the victim on May 5, 2011, advising him to rather institute a civil action against the judge to recover his money.

However, the bribery case which was part of a petition sent to the Chief Justice was not investigated by the Unit, thus allowing Mr. Aseidu-Bedu, to be presiding over a Circuit Court in Kpando in the Volta Region.

Mr. Ackummey, who reminded the President of the GBA of his re-election promise at Elmina to weed out corruption from the judiciary, again questioned whether the Chief Justice and the Magistrates and Judges Association were not hypocritical in blacklisting him and three other lawyers for claiming there was corruption in the judiciary although they were aware of Mr. Aseidu-Bedu’s case as at December 2010.

The copies of the letter were sent President John Mills, the Chief Justice, Speaker of Parlaiment, the Inspector General of Police, the President of the Greater Accra Bar Association and Lawyer Yankyera Kwame A.