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| L-R: Pele & Assibit Credit: Graphic Online |
Ms Carolyne Lamptey, a
specialist in corruption asset recovery, says prosecutors should have
identified the assets of Abuga Pele and
Philip Akpeena Assibit during the trial and prior to the sentencing of the two to
assure the recovery of the GH¢4.1 million stolen from the state.
According to her, the
prosecutors could have said to the judge that “we’ve identified their assets,
we know how much they own and so this is what we expect them to pay to the
state.”
But the prosecutors did not
do that, suggests Ms Lamptey, the Prosecutions Adviser to the Strengthening Action
Against Corruption – Ghana (STAAC).
Speaking on the Corruption
Watch Radio Programme on Joy FM’s
Super Morning Show on Wednesday morning, Ms Lamptey stated that “I was at the
sentencing… and my concern was, unfortunately, that the prosecution hadn’t done
enough to securing the assets, to begin with.
“The main thing about these
sorts of cases is that right from the beginning when the cases are investigated
at EOCO [Economic and Organised Crime Office] or the police, the prosecutors
should be involved from day one.”
Ms Lamptey stated: “That
was, for me, a missed opportunity by the prosecution.”
She posited that EOCO’s
powers had been taken advantage of. “I mean under the legislation, here in Ghana,
EOCO has powers in which they can freeze assets. They’ve got freezing powers
where you can identify the asset the individual owns and you can freeze it.”
So, prosecutors could have
been proactive and frozen the assets. It would have been better than having the
judge ask the convicts what they were prepared to pay, she reasoned.
The Pele and Assibit trial
Justice Afia Serwaa
Asare-Botwe presided over the four-year trial, which commenced on 11th
February, 2014 and terminated on 23rd February, 2018 when the pair
was sentenced to various jail terms.
Pele was given two terms of four
years and six years on different counts.
But since he will have his
sentence running concurrently, he will serve six years in jail.
Assibit, on the other hand, received
one twelve-year sentence and one four-year term, which he will serve
concurrently. His conviction was for two different counts.
But an order from the court
for the recovery of assets appears to have generated keen interest, prompting
producers of the Corruption Watch Radio Programme to focus the Wednesday, March
7, 2018 edition on the court order.
In the 53-page judgement
document, Justice Asare-Botwe stated that: “…the state is ordered to recover
the value of any property or asset” belonging to Assibit to the tune of US
$1,948,626.28.
Gap in asset recovery
Ms Lamptey, who has served
as a UK Crown Prosecutor and Specialist Prosecutor in Cairo, Egypt, believes
Ghana does not have a norm of freezing assets as part of trial process.
“Unfortunately, what I’ve
learnt so far during my time here in Ghana and working with the prosecutors and
the DPPs’ [Director of Public Prosecutions] office is that there is still not
enough awareness by the prosecutors about directing investigators to go after
assets.”
She says prosecutors in
Ghana should be educated on advising investigators to look for the assets of
suspects of crime.
“Sometimes, you can’t get it
at the beginning but certainly as the case is progressing, you can identify
where the asset might be. That’s something that is yet to filter through the
prosecutors,” she observed.
She emphasised that: “First
thing to understand is that the idea of asset recovery is that you are going
after the criminal asset. It’s not instead of; it’s part of the criminal
process. So what you want to do is to get the prosecutors and the investigators
to work together.
She further pointed out that
“People commit crime… to get money; yes, that’s why they do it. …So, asset recovery is quite a key and important
process to fighting all crime.”
Good news
The good news is that the Office
of the Special Prosecutor Act has strengthened the legal regime for the freezing
of assets. The OSP Act, according to Ms Lamptey, can freeze the assets of the
suspects as well as, manage and preserve such assets. So, by the time the
entire process of the case is over, if “You’ve got a house, it’s increased in
value because it’s been kept in place; the business has gone up and then when
it comes to the confiscation, you’ve got money with which to take from the
individuals.”
Essentially, the asset serves
as a guarantee to what has been stolen from the state.
Another panelist on the program,
Mrs Beauty Emefa Narteh, Executive Secretary of the Ghana Anti-Corruption
Coalition, added that the OSP Act is stronger; it is not as the EOCO Act has
been. The management of the asset is catered for.
She also drew attention to
other aspects of combating corruption, saying that when you talk about the
fight against corruption, it needs to be done holistically.
“So we need to put in
preventive measures plus education, which is also very important. Citizens need
to understand and know what the law says in terms of what they do,” she stated.
In this sense, when it comes
to asset tracing, citizens play an important role because it is citizens who
know that this person has this property or that asset.
“Corruption Watch” is an
intervention that seeks to investigate, expose public sector corruption, and
pursue cases from investigation, exposure, to closure and engender demand for
institutional reform. It is funded by
STAAC and it is being implemented by the Ghana Center for Democratic
Development (CDD-Ghana) in collaboration with Joy FM, Ghana Integrity
Initiative (GII), Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), and Africa Center for
International Law and Accountability (ACILA).
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