The legal battle against former Director General of the National Signals Bureau (NSB), Charles Adu Boahene, has taken a dramatic turn, with his legal team appealing a court decision after alleging that 83 pages of a crucial bank statement were missing from the prosecution’s documents.
The lawyer for the accused, Samuel Atta-Akyea, has accused the prosecution of a “deficit of evidence” and said the judge is blocking their access to vital information needed for their defence.
The case, which has garnered national attention, sees Adu Boahene, his wife, and two others facing 11 charges, including stealing, money laundering of GH¢49.1 million in state funds, willfully causing financial loss to the state, and abuse of public office.
The prosecution, led by the Attorney-General’s Department, alleges that Adu Boahene, while serving as the Director of the NSB, illegally transferred funds from a state-owned account to a private company.
In an interview on JoyNews on Friday, August 29, Mr Atta-Akyea expressed his frustration with the court’s proceedings.
“The Attorney General withheld about 83 pages of a bank statement that the Attorney General has filed before the court,” he said. “So you could see a deficit of evidence by what the Attorney General filed before the court.”
According to Atta-Akyea, the defence team immediately raised an objection, questioning the whereabouts of the remaining pages.
He claims the judge “blocked it,” preventing the prosecution from providing the missing documents.
“The judge didn’t want them to bring it. This is where we are, fact. These are all facts if you are a journalist following this story and that’s why we’ve appealed the decision of the judge that the judge should not block evidence that the accused persons require to prepare their defence and even use those pieces of evidence to cross-examine the witnesses who are being called,” Atta-Akyea stated.
The defence’s appeal highlights a core tenet of criminal law in Ghana, where the accused has a constitutional right to a fair trial, including access to all evidence that is both inculpatory (points to guilt) and exculpatory (points to innocence).
Mr Atta-Akyea maintains that the missing bank statement pages could hold the key to exonerating his client, or at the very least, allow for a robust cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses.
The dispute over the bank statements is not the first time the defence has raised issues with the prosecution’s disclosures.
In an earlier ruling, the court partially granted a motion filed by Atta-Akyea for further disclosures, ordering the Ghana Police Service to provide the defence with information on a BMW vehicle linked to the case.
The prosecution had alleged that Adu Boahene had not declared the vehicle as an asset and had imported it, claims the defence has denied.
But the Deputy Attorney-General, Justice Srem Sai, has rejected the claims.
In a post on X on Thursday, August 28, he dismissed suggestions that the Attorney-General’s office had lost evidence in the Republic v Adu-Boahene trial.
“The Attorney-General’s office has not lost any evidence regarding the ongoing Republic v Adu-Boahene criminal trial,” he wrote.
Read also: Deputy Attorney-General refutes claims of lost evidence in Adu-Boahene trial
According to him, all relevant documents were intact and had been duly filed before the court.
“As of June 18, we had filed all the documents which we intend to rely on to prove the charges against the four accused persons in the case.
“The documents include contracts of sale, bank wire transfer records, bank account statements, company registration documents, property ownership records and purchase receipts, INTERPOL stolen vehicle records, investigative caution statements and charge statements of each accused person, records of asset non-declaration, a flow chart of money movements through a complex web of bank accounts, and testimonies of our three witnesses.”