Private legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu, says the scandal involving former Sanitation Minister, Cecilia Dapaah, shows that President Nana Akufo-Addo has lost his moral stand on corruption.
Kpebu made the statement in an interview on Eyewitness News on Citi FM on Tuesday, following revelations by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) that the former Sanitation Minister was using aliases to conceal transactions from her undeclared real estate business and that her late brother’s account was still active and was still sending money to her.
“President Akufo-Addo has lost the moral stand, he is no longer on a moral high horse. He couldn’t fire the minister. The minister left by herself and that showed Akufo-Addo is weak, he couldn’t fire her. Meanwhile, in opposition, he said, ‘I will not support corruption, I will not do family and friends.’ He was using family and friends in this instance, he couldn’t sack her. It took public opinion, public pressure and then madam Dapaah went.”
“The other side that comes in is that he didn’t select well. So once he didn’t select a good minister and the minister is embroiled in all of this embarrassing thing, it also touches on the president. Don’t forget they say show me your friend and I will show you my character. So sometimes there is that collective punishment,” he stated.
Court documents filed by the OSP have disclosed that the former Sanitation Minister, Cecilia Dapaah used aliases to conceal transactions from undeclared real estate business.
“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 by the OSP 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,” the OSP said.
Also, the OSP revealed that a bank account belonging to the deceased brother of Cecilia Dapaah has been actively sending money to the former Sanitation Minister.
“Analysis of the statements in the first respondent’s Prudential Bank account number 0090924640014 highly suspicious transactions involving the name of the first respondent’s deceased brother – Nana Akwasi Essan. The said Nana Akwasi Essan died in January 2022 and there is no record domiciled at the financial institutions of probate or letters of administration granted to personal representatives). Strangely, there are active transfers from the deceased person’s bank account to that of the first respondent’s Prudential Bank account number 0090924640014.
“As recently as 19 September 2022 and 23 May 2023, amounts of Ten Thousand Four Hundred and Fifty cedis (GH¢10,450.00) and Eleven Thousand Two Hundred and Eighty Thousand cedis (GH¢11,280.00) respectively were transferred, supposedly by the deceased brother to the first respondent,” the OSP noted.
