Private legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu, has said he disagrees with lawyers of Former Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Madam Cecilia Abena Dahaah who have filed an interlocutory injunction application to restrain the Office of the Special Prpscero (OSP) from continuing the investigation on their client pending the determination of the said application.
Kpebu said reseizure and refreezing of bank accounts is not new in the dispensation.
Madam Dapaah filed an application at the Human Rights Division of the Accra High Court, seeking an order of an interlocutory injunction against the OSP.
She is praying the Court to restrain the OSP, its officers, assigns and servants from taking any step that will adversely affect or prejudice her rights to fair trial, protection from deprivation of property and administrative justice. She said this should be enforced until the final determination of the case between her and the OSP.
These were contained in her affidavit filed in response to the suit by the OSP.
Madam Cecilia Dapaah had initially opposed the suit against her by the OSP, pointing out that the re-seizure of her monies and re-freezing of her accounts and property were “unfair, unreasonable, capricious, arbitrary and ultra vires” viz-a-viz the OSP’s powers in Act 959 and provisions of Article 23 and 296 of the 1992 Constitution. She prayed the court to order the OSP to release her money and unfreeze her account.
She also prayed the court to prohibit the OSP from continuing the investigation about her and her husband, Daniel Osei Kufuor. The former Bantama Member of Parliament (MP) said her opposition was necessitated by the OSP’s “prejudicial” and “arbitrary” conduct since the inception of its investigations against her.
“I am advised by Counsel and verily believe same to be true that to prevent further violation of my constitutionally guaranteed rights and rendering my application for judicial review otiose, it is imperative that the Respondent is restrained from continuing his investigation pending the determination of my said application.”
She prayed to the court that damages against her would be “inadequate to compensate me” if her application for an injunction is not granted by the court.
But speaking on this matter on the Ghana Tonight show on TV3, Tuesday, October 10, Mr Kpebu said “I don’t agree because the case is that, the last time they were in court, the one that the judge threw out the application for confirmation of the seizure of the currency and bank account or confirmation of the freezing orders, the judge didn’t deal with the case to a finality, it was an application.
“The OSP is allowed to do what it is currently doing, that is the reseizure and the refreezing of the accounts and so also the subsequent application to ask the judge to confirm the seizure of the currency and then to freeze the account is allowed in law.
“It is even in the constitution that when a power is given in the constitution or any other law, that power can be used as many times as the circumstances that warrant the power to be used arise. So this thing about the reseizure of the currency and then the freezing of the account is not new.”