Peprah Files Appeal

Former Finance Minister in the NDC government, Kwame Peprah has filed an appeal at an Accra High Court against his conviction and sentence by the Fast Track Court presided over by Justice Dixon Kwame Afreh, a Supreme Court judge.

The appeal was filed on his behalf by Kwaku Baah, his solicitor. No date has been fixed for hearing.

Peprah, now serving four years imprisonment at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison for conspiracy to commit crime and four counts of willfully causing financial loss to the state, argued that the entire judgement was against the weight of evidence adduced and therefore, his conviction and sentence were wrong in law.

He contended that the charges of conspiracy against him was not proved, the charge was hopelessly bad for duplicity and the trial judge erred in law in not dismissing the charge of conspiracy and acquitting and discharging him.

The trial judge, Mr Peprah argued, misdirected himself by non direction and thus caused a substantial injustice to the appellant when he neglected and or ignored the fact that in the Cotton case which he relied on, the United States court convicted the said Cotton for defrauding the State of Ghana and ordered her to refund the $20 million she got fraudulently.

Other grounds of appeal are that Mr Justice Afreh misdirected himself when in assessing the loss to the state, he ignored or neglected to take into account the ''first class world standard'' mill currently located at Aveyime and which government had taken over and using to mill Ghana’s rice for sale.