OSP details on how “minister” Cecilia Dapaah operated a real estate business under a false name

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In a new application to a High Court in Accra, the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) requested confirmation of the seizure of certain funds it had earlier taken from the home of censured former sanitation minister Cecilia Dapaah and an order to freeze several bank accounts.

In an 8-page court filing, which has been quoted by numerous local media outlets, the OSP outlines a number of discoveries it has made in relation to the confiscated monies, which total around US$590,000 and more than GH2.8 million in cash.

The OSP shed light on several enterprises the former minister was reportedly involved in, businesses it claimed she exploited as part of her defense on the source of some of the funds in her bank account.

“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 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 stated that there was no proof of the source of the stolen funds in relation to the findings in the initial case where her two househelps are alleged to have stolen a million dollars, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in euros and Ghana cedis.

There are no financial records or indications of the source(s) of the money that was allegedly taken from the respondents’ home and found there by the OSP.

“Furthermore, there is no proof that the money amounts were obtained from any lawful enterprises, professions, or vocations, nor is there proof that they were dutifully declared and subject to any required payments. “During the search conducted in her presence, the first respondent disavowed and claimed no knowledge of the presence of the said cash sums in the residence. The conduct of the first respondent, being a public officer, heightened the suspicion of the authorised officers of the OSP that the cash sums were tainted property.”

On August 21, the court ordered the OSP to unfreeze the former minister’s accounts and return her property; the office obliged and refroze them before submitting the present application.

The date of the hearing is set on October 18, 2023.

Source:Radiooneghana.com