The penchant of the Attorney General, Dominic Ayine, to peddle untruths in his press conferences is becoming quite alarming.
1. On 28 July 2025, he stated with some boldness that it took the Attorney General six months to file witness statements in the Republic vs Ato Forson & Two Others trial. This is palpably false, just like many other statements by him.
The accused persons in the Republic vs Ato Forson & Two Others case were arraigned before court for the first time on 18 January 2022. The court, on that day, gave directions for filing of disclosures after the grant of bail to all the accused and adjourned proceedings to 15 February 2022.
The prosecution complied with the order of the court and filed all documents to rely on, including all intended exhibits, documents required by the defence and all witness statements of witnesses to be called by the Republic, on 14 February 2022 – within 27 days (less than one month), and not six months as wildly claimed by Ayine.
For the sake of banishing falsehood and exposing the ways of the wicked, I hereby exhibit a copy of the record of proceedings for 18 January 2022, and the process titled “Documents To Be Relied On” filed by the attorney general on 14 February 2022.
The Office of the Attorney General never, on a single occasion in the “Ato Forson” trial, requested further time to file a witness statement or, indeed, any document at all.
2. The important question is, how can the period of 27 days within which the Attorney General filed witness statements and documents to be relied on in the “Ato Forson” trial appear to be six months in the mind of Ayine? Is it sheer recklessness, or a deliberate effort to make his predecessor, and for that matter the office he now heads, look bad?
The docket on the case is in Ayine’s office, and the facts could easily have been verified. I have said before that the tendency of the Attorney General to publish plain untruths, half-truths and misinformation against the prosecuting team and courts adjudicating cases previously being prosecuted by his office is highly unprofessional. Ayine’s actions constitute an attack on the very office he now heads.
3. The inescapable reality of Ayine’s latest act and ex post facto rationalisations (laden with contradictions and inconsistencies as they are) is that he sought to free his former clients from the clutches of criminal prosecution through the exercise of the power of nolle prosequi. That is the first disclosure he should have made to the public at his press conference. Ghanaians deserve this basic courtesy.
4. Ayine ought not mislead the public into thinking that, through some unprecedented genius, he has recovered assets or money for the state. All the assets of the Duffuors, uniBank and related companies, as well as other persons being prosecuted with them, had already been identified by the receivers of uniBank appointed by the Bank of Ghana. The receiver already had a full list and profile of assets owned by them. Dr Ayine should indicate to the public when either he or his team this year discovered any new assets owned by the Duffuors.
The record will reflect the fact that, to date, Ayine has not recovered a single cedi in the uniBank matter. What he proposes to do, and for which he has already entered nolle prosequi, is to use, in the future, some of the assets already identified by the receiver to defray what he has unilaterally determined to be owed by the accused persons.
Instructively, this arrangement is not pursued under any law. It is only pursuant to the exercise of Ayine’s power of nolle prosequi. Ayine, thus, cannot lay claim to recovering any more assets than what the receiver already has. He also cannot claim to have recovered for the Republic any money from the accused persons this year.
Questions arising include: was any agreement executed with the Republic before the entry of nolle prosequi, and, if so, when? Where is that agreement? Has any fair and objective valuation of the properties been done, and, if so, when? Where is the valuation report? In the event of default, what is the penalty, and how enforceable is it?
5. In Republic vs William Ato Essien – a case arising out of the collapse of Capital Bank – the amount admitted as owed by Ato Essien himself was GHC27 million. The state, in an agreement entered into under Section 35 of the Courts Act 1993 (Act 459), settled on GHC90 million to be paid by the accused person.
The accused paid GHC30 million in cash before the settlement was adopted by the court, with the rest to be paid over a period of one year. When he defaulted after paying GHC9 million in addition to the GHC30 million deposit, the Attorney General applied to the court for him to be sentenced to a term in prison. Ato Essien is at present in custody serving a 15-year jail term.
I dare say that, on account of the “RESETTING” of prosecution we are witnessing, there is no justification for Ato Essien to be in jail. Free Ato Essien now!
6. I ask: under what circumstance does Ayine claim that counsel for the accused in the Beige Bank case offered him GHC10 million? I assert that there is no record of this. I challenge Ayine to produce a receipt of such a proposal and his official response. Was it a proposal to Ayine in his private capacity?
7. The state lost the Beige Bank case under Ayine’s watch on an appeal against a ruling on a submission of no case filed by the accused. Alarmingly, instead of exploring means of challenging the correctness of the decision by the Court of Appeal at the Supreme Court, Ayine seems very satisfied with the development and has already made comments suggestive of a disinclination to appeal.
8. I have been wondering why Ayine paints such a dreary and bleak picture of the prosecution of financial crimes. The facts show that between 2017 and 2025, the only high-profile financial crime case in which the office failed to secure conviction was Republic vs Ato Forson & Two Others, in which the accused persons were acquitted in a curious 2-1 judgment of the Court of Appeal, and in respect of which Ayine abandoned the conduct of an appeal filed by the attorney general and pending at the Supreme Court at the time he took office as Attorney General.
The office secured conviction in Republic vs Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie & Others, Republic vs Sedinam Tamakloe Attionu, Republic vs Daniel Duku & Others (the Venture Capital case), Republic vs William Ato Essien, etc.
Indeed, on Sedinam Tamakloe Attionu, Ayine ought to brief the nation on what he is doing to extradite the lady to serve her sentence in Ghana or to trace her assets.
Ayine should simply declare his fundamental aversion to prosecution of financial crimes against a section of the Ghanaian society and an appetite for cutting deals in lieu of prosecution.
9. The allegation of undue delay in the prosecution of white-collar crime regularly put up by Ayine as justification for cutting deals in lieu of prosecution is a sham and ought to be rejected by the nation. The record will again reflect the fact that the inordinate delay in the trial of serious financial crime cases filed against leading members of the erstwhile NDC administration, witnessed in this country the past eight years, was all a product of the tactics and machinations of defence counsel, including Ayine.
Unfortunately, they were aided by the justice system as they filed numerous interlocutory applications, appeals and judicial review applications at the Supreme Court. It is ironic that the first significant action by the Attorney General when the NDC assumed power was to discontinue all such cases filed against leading members of the NDC, completely impeding accountability and the rule of law.
10. I recall that, to cure the undue delays with the prosecution of criminal cases generally, I laid in Parliament and spearheaded to near passage an amendment to the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) Act, which would eliminate most of the bottlenecks with the criminal procedure laws of the country, including a suspension of the filing of interlocutory appeals until the submission of the no-case stage, and ensure day-to-day trial of criminal cases.
If Ayine seeks to speed up the trial of financial cases, he ought to reintroduce that bill into Parliament (just as he has done with the constitutional instrument on the removal of justices of the superior courts, which he adopted in full without changing a single clause when he assumed office and has since laid in Parliament).
11. A careful analysis of all the cases discontinued by Ayine would show an abandonment of the pursuit of a total of over GHC7 billion, if one were to exclude the deal for GHC2 billion that Ayine claims to have struck in the uniBank case. The Republic, through Ayine’s decision to discontinue the prosecution of the cases, has automatically lost this gargantuan amount. It calls for an inquiry.
12. As a footnote, I cannot lose sight of the condescending tone in which Ayine frequently speaks about his predecessors with comments like “… those who started the prosecution did not do this … they failed to do this … but I am doing this”, etc, which cannot be lost on all.
The record shows that the attorney general who commenced prosecution of most of the banking sector cases that Ayine treats with disdain was Miss Gloria Afua Akuffo, who is many years senior to Ayine both at the Bar and in office. In fact, it goes without saying that all of Ghana’s previous attorneys general are Ayine’s seniors in office. Lol. They deserve utmost respect.
The veiled disparagement of former attorneys general by Ayine departs from the conservative traditions of that high office and is most unfortunate.
LEGALLY SPEAKING …!
By Godfred Yeboah Dame, Dame & Partners, Accra
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