Cecilia Dapaah saga: Police don’t need to know ‘real’ owner of stolen cash to prosecute – Lawyer

Cecilia Abena Dapaah, former Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources

Law lecturer Dr Justice Srem-Sai has stated that the police investigating the stealing of huge sums of cash from the bedroom of the former Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources Cecilia Abena Dapaah did not need to state whether or not the Minister had received the money from her dead relatives or from funeral donations since their work was to investigate the alleged crime of stealing and not the source of the money stolen.

He explained that since the money was in the possession of the Minister, it was adequate on the part of the police to conclude that she was the owner of the money at that given time.

He insisted that the police did no wrong for putting out the information regarding the money stolen without stating how the Minister may have acquired such huge amounts.

"Now as to whether what she is saying – that the money has been transferred or transmitted to her – that will not even matter in the job of the police; what they are doing.

"It won’t matter because the police are not investigating the source of the funding. At this point, what the police are doing is to say that, “look someone owns a property and another person takes it. It’s stealing.”

Let’s not confuse the issue. At this point, the police are investigating stealing against some different people. They are not into the question of where did the complainant get the money from.

"So there is nothing wrong with what the police have put on record. As far as they are concerned, the money was lawfully in the possession of her. There she is the owner at the time," Dr Srem-Sai explained on Joy FM’s Newsfile programme Saturday, July 29, 2023.

The embattled former Minister Cecilia Abena Dapaah had accused the police of putting out information that contained “noticeable inconsistencies” about the amount of cash involved but she has since not put out her own version of how much she lost. In that case, Dr Srem-Sai has argued that the police cannot be faulted.