We didn’t clear to Cecilia Dapaah of corruption – OSP

The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has dismissed claims that it cleared the former Minister for Sanitation, Cecilia Dapaah of corruption.

The OSP said it did not clear the ex-Minister before transferring her case to the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO).

in an interview with Joy News over the weekend, the Director for Strategy, Research, and Communications at the OSP, Mr. Samuel Appiah Darko, clarified that his office did not clear Cecilia Dapaah of corruption-related offences.

He explained that the OSP closed its investigation after the investigations showed the offence was largely in the province of money laundering.

It also noted that Madam Dapaah could not reasonably explain all the seized monies from her home as all answers were untrue after investigations.

Mr. Darko maintained that EOCO did not request the FBI investigation report, although there were joint representatives from the two agencies working on the file transfer.

“We want to make it very clear that EOCO did not request for the FBI report. Even if they did, the FBI report has a lot of confidentiality clauses that were directed particularly to the OSP and you can’t just give it to another agency because you have transferred the case. There ought to be a lot of inter-agency collaboration and clearance. So if it had happened, we may have triggered the clearance clauses so that either we are cleared by FBI or FBI sends the report directly to EOCO.”

He said the OSP referred the case to EOCO, with all relevant documentation including caution statements of over 20 suspects in America, Accra and Kumasi and other information including relatives of Madam Dapaah claiming the monies and some jewellery in her house were family heirlooms to assist EOCO in conducting its own independent investigation into the financial transactions involved.

“The OSP should be considered as a whistleblower to EOCO. So as a whistle-blower, we gave EOCO platinum information. Ordinarily, you will not even find other agencies giving such information to EOCO,” Mr. Darko noted in the interview.

The OSP investigated Cecilia Dapaah for alleged corruption and corruption-related offences after news reports broke that their domestic staff stole millions of local and foreign currencies, along with other personal effects belonging to the former minister and her husband.

The AG’s Office advised EOCO to stop investigations on grounds that the file did not have an investigative report and further documentation to ground a money laundering prosecution.

The AG further said the police are also investigating the source of funding by Madam Cecilia Dapaah, so there was no need for EOCO to continue with the case.

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