Abodakpi's appeal fixed for October 11

By William Yaw Owusu

Thursday October 10, 2007
The Court of Appeal yesterday adjourned to Thursday October 11, the case in which Daniel Kwasi Abodakpi, former Minister of Trade and Industry, is appealing against a 10-year conviction imposed by an Accra Fast Court for causing financial loss to the state.

The court could not proceed to hear the motion because just as proceedings commenced, it detected an administrative error in a supplementary affidavit supporting the appeal Abodakpi filed.

Instead of the court’s registry separating the supplementary affidavit from the substantive appeal, it bundled the two process together and this compelled Justice B.T. Aryeetey, who chaired the three member panel, to adjourn the case, for the registry to straighten things up.”

Mr. Tony Lithur, counsel for Abodakpi, who had filed a fresh application for bail pending the appeal for the convicted Member of Parliament for Keta could therefore not move the application due to the lapse.

He said before the bail application could be moved, he will need to first move the motion for the additional grounds in the supplementary affidavit to be admitted by the court after which he could make references to it when moving the bail application.

“When I am moving the bail application I would like to refer to the new grounds raised in our supplementary affidavit but before this can be done the court will have to deal with the supplementary affidavit to amend the substantive appeal motion.”

In his supplementary affidavit to support the application for bail, Abodakpi said he led evidence at the trial to show that the concept of the Science and Technology Park in respect of which Dr. Frederick Owusu Boadu, was tasked to prepare ha d been discussed by him and donors of the Trade and Investment Project Fund in their annual review.

He said evidence by one of the prosecution witnesses during cross examination showed clearly that it was the designation of the late Victor Selormey as former Deputy Ministry of Finance, originally on trial with Abodakpi, that triggered the transfer of funds to Dr. Owusu-Boadu’s account following the change of the title of the study proposal to feasibility study.

Abodakpi further submitted that there was evidence on record that the TIP Funds could not have been used for the preparatory stage of the Gateway Project and also no evidence was led to link him, Selormey and Dr. Owusu-Boadu to any prior meeting to cream money off the state.

He also said in his affidavit that there was no direct evidence on record of the specific intent necessary to prove the charges levelled against him.

Abodakpi who was in court, was jailed 10 years on February 5, in hard labour on seven counts of conspiracy, causing financial loss to the state and defrauding by false pretences by Accra Fast Track High Court.

He was said to have illegally authorised the payment of c400,000 dollars to Dr. Owusu Boadu, a Ghanaian Consultant in Texas, United States, from the TIP fund.

The eight million dollar TIP fund was set up by the NDC government to promote the non-traditional export sector.

He was originally charged with Selormey who died in the course of the trial. Abodakpi, 57, then filed an application for bail pending appeal at the same court where he was convicted but this was dismissed by Justice Stephen Twerefuor Farkye of the Court of Appeal on April 19.

On June 23, the Court of Appeal adjourned sine die (indefinitely) Abodakpi’s appeal application because the panel was not properly constituted.

This was because Justice Annin Yeboah, one of the panel members was said to have been part of a group of judges who dismissed Abodakpo’s submission of “no case” application during the trial and was thus not qualified to be a member of that panel.

On June 27, the court again adjourned sine die from hearing the same application because Mr. Charles Hayibor, then counsel for Abodakpi had notified the court that the records of proceedings at the trial was not complete.

When the case was called the third time in August, Mr. Lithur who had taken over the case alledged that he had evidence that it was Justice Henrietta Abban, member of the panel, who placed a phone call to Justice Farkye to deal with Abodakpi.

Justice Abban subsequently withdrew her representation on the panel.

The General Legal Council is currently investigating the allegation.

The new panel members include Justices Samuel K. Marful-Sau and Mariama Owusu.