‘AG To Enter More Nolle Prosequi If…’

The Office of the Attorney General (AG) and Ministry of Justice would enter more nolle prosequi, barring any last-minute change of mind, the Deputy Minister-designate for the office, Justice Srem Sai has revealed.

According to him, the A-G’s office would not pursue any case that would not lead to conviction, adding that AG Ayine was convinced that the trial involving the persons he freed had no merit.

He described the cases as persecution of political opponents by the Akufo-Addo government, claiming that the former AG, Godfred Dame, was engaged in politics in those prosecutions and not law.

Appearing last Saturday, February 15, 2025 on Newsfile on JoyNews, he defended the actions taken by the AG, Dominic Akuritinga Ayine.

He said that the power of the Attorney General’s office is sui generis (unique), as stated by the 1992 constitution.

Justice Srem Sai said, “But I think we should take the Attorney General’s word, when he said that from his professional position, he has examined all the dockets. He has consulted widely, not just with his department, but the prosecutors in his department, and also with defence counsel and even people beyond that. And he has come to the firm conviction that these cases, and there are many more to come, these cases were not going to lead to any conviction.”

Alarmed by the hint, the host of the show, lawyer Samson Lardy Ayenini asked, “are there many more to come?,” to which lawyer Justice Srem Sai responded, “There will be more cases.”

 

EXCERPTS OF THE CONVERSATION

Samson: It’s unprecedented in our history. That you [AG] are discontinuing cases in such mass. Imagine that another government comes in the next four years and its members are being prosecuted. And they decide to enter nolle prosequi. What are we making of the judicial system?

 

Srem Sai: What is unprecedented is an Attorney General who has been partisan for all the years that he’s in office and has decided, even without evidence, to persecute people. That is what we should be concerned about. Not the person who has come to save the situation.

I mean, if you put someone in the criminal justice system and you go to sleep for all these years. And someone comes to say that I have examined what you have done. You have no real basis for starting some of these trials.

 

Samson: If the evidence exists that will not lead to their conviction, and some of the cases are just about to finish, why don’t you finish it and allow the court to acquit and discharge them? And that in the Unibank case the prosecution had closed its case. So, the withdrawal means that Johnson Asiamah is acquitted and discharged. But in the other one, I’m not sure they closed their case. So, it means there’s room that in future he may suffer.

 

Srem Sai: Samson, no one deserves to be put through the ordeal of criminal trial even for one day, if there’s no basis for it. So, the fact that they have suffered this period does not justify any attempt to say that…

 

Samson: There’s no basis where the courts, in almost all these cases, the courts have come to the conclusion that they have a case to answer. And they are in the processes of answering their case. So how do you come to that conclusion?

 

Srem Sai: If the court was the most appropriate place to determine this, I don’t think the lawmakers would give the power of nolle prosequi. They would have just said that once you start trial, allow the court to go. But in the wisdom of those who designed our criminal justice system, they have a reason to give the power of knowledge to the prosecutor, which could be exercised at any point in time.

That shows that they understood that the yardstick that the courts work with may not necessarily be the one that the prosecutorial discretion will be applying. So, we cannot say that asking for knowledge of the prosecutor means that the courts are not effective or anything like that. We are just saying that to subject a human being, a citizen, to criminal process… I mean, I’m surprised that we are making this comment. We were here…

 

Justice Sai did not take kindly to the tag Operation Clear All Looters (OCAL), which is in sharp contrast to the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL).

According to him, majority of the cases withdrawn by the AG had nothing to do with state looting, citing the Saglemi case, involving Collins Dauda and the Ambulance trial with Ato Forson.

“What has Ato Forson got to do with any looting? What has Saglemi got to do… Saglemi was misapplication of the funds. It has nothing to do with looting…” he retorted.

 

WORRYING

On his part, Lawyer Frank Davies indicated that the development of discontinuing such cases is a worrying phenomenon.

He stated that “this is the first in the political dispensation of the Fourth Republic that an Attorney General has involved in this wholesale, wholesale instance of non-prosecution and withdrawal of charges against politically exposed persons in this jurisdiction. And it is worrying.”

 

He explained that it is worrying because of the precedent set, adding that any other Attorney General can repeat same in future, when there are cases against politically exposed persons.

He argued that the AG is the chief or principal legal advisor to government and could not have acted on these cases which involved financial losses to the state, without consulting the president, as Dr. Ayine claimed.

https://youtu.be/KEO2_jcVeAM

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