FORMER FIRST LADY'S CASE ADJOURNED UNTIL APRIL 2008

THE Accra Fast Track High Court today adjourned to April 16, 2008, the case in which Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings and four others are standing trial for allegedly causing financial loss to the state.
Lawyers for the parties met in the judge’s chambers to take the date but no official reason was assigned.
However, the former first lady as well as the other defendants were in court, and as usual, they were accompanied by a large crowd.
Nana Konadu, Sherry Ayittey, the Managing Director of CDCL, and Caridem as an entity filed the application for permanent stay of proceedings because the subject matter for which they were standing trial was being contested in another court in a civil suit brought against the Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC) and the Attorney-General by CDCL over the take-over of the GIHOC Nsawam Cannery.
Also standing trial alongside the applicants are Emmanuel Amuzu Agbodo, a former Executive Secretary of the Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC), and Kwame Peprah, a former Minister of Finance and former Chairman of the DIC.
They are facing various charges of conspiracy, causing financial loss to public property, conspiracy to obtain public property by false statement, obtaining public property by false statement and altering forged document.
They have denied the offences and have been admitted to self-recognisance bail.
The accused persons were alleged to have caused losses to public property in 1995 running into billions of cedis following the divestiture of the GIHOC Cannery at Nsawam, a government cannery, acquired by CDCL, which is owned by the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM).
On December 18, last year, the court dismissed an application for stay of proceedings filed by the defendants to enable them to pursue the civil aspect of the matter but according to the court, where there were both a civil and criminal proceedings pending over an issue, the criminal action outweighed the civil one and, therefore, refused the application.
Counsel for Nana Konadu, Mr Tony Lithur, prayed the court on November 15, 2007 to stay proceedings in the matter because of a civil suit between Caridem Development Company Limited (CDCL) and the Attorney-General (A-G) over the ownership of the company, which is pending at the High Court, or in the interim, dismiss the case and stated that the criminal proceedings brought against his clients amounted to an abuse of power by the Attorney-General.
Mr Lithur said the court had power to question the activities of the Executive, of which the Attorney-General was part, and if that was not done, it would place the Attorney-General above the Constitution of the land.
The court ruled that the civil suit and the instant case were not related, neither did they merge, because the latter involved a declaration of ownership and abrogation of contract, while the ingredients required to prove them were different.
It said although it was not for counsel to speculate the probable findings, the court was bound to protect itself from abuse.
Regarding an assertion by counsel that the Attorney-General, as a public officer and member of the executive, was exercising arbitrary power to abuse the court process, the court ruled that the Constitution mandated the A-G, as a duty, to initiate and conduct all criminal proceedings in the country.
The court admitted that while the A-G was bound to do that, he must not be arbitrary or capricious and stated that the trial in both cases had not commenced.
It said although the arguments put up by the counsel was ingenuous, they did not impress the court because once and until it was progressing, the A-G was entitled to substitute the charges and those rights of the A-G could not be taken away from him.
Counsel had argued that the residual power of the Supreme Court was superior to any legislation and for that reason, if the court did not accept what the Attorney-General was doing, then it meant the Executive could not be checked.
The Attorney-General, Mr Joe Ghartey, had described the application as unmeritorious because it was totally unknown in criminal law and the Constitution.
He said the institution of criminal action against the five was based on the Auditor-General's report on the malfeasance they committed in the acquisition of the GIHOC/Nsawam Cannery.