The Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Dominic Ayine, has refuted claims that his office is engaging in clandestine agreements with individuals under investigation by the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) initiative.
He stated that any assertions of plea bargaining or covert arrangements are unfounded, stressing that all cases referred to his office are being processed
in strict accordance with the law.
These assurances were given during a working visit by Vice President Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang to the Ministry of Justice, where Ayine provided a briefing.
He also described accusations that his office is compromising ORAL cases as baseless, assuring the Vice President that no case file submitted to his office has been tampered with.
“When it comes to ORAL, there are issues being raised about the fact that we are cutting deals in the ORAL cases. Your Excellency, ORAL is going very, very well. The prosecutions, which are being led by my deputy and the Director of Public Prosecutions, are going very, very well,” he said.
“I want to put it on record, and the National Intelligence Bureau will bear me out, that no docket has come here that has been compromised in any way,” he stated.
“No deal, no plea arrangement has been entered into with anybody who has committed an offence that comes within the ambit of the ORAL cases we have received from the NIB and are prosecuting.”
He further revealed that 16 dockets are currently under review, noting that his office is subjecting them to detailed scrutiny before proceeding.
“We will be putting those ones through the process of critical scrutiny so that when we notice loopholes in the investigations, we will tell the investigative authorities to bring us more evidence, as we are doing now with the National Service prosecution,” he explained.
The Attorney-General used the opportunity to reassure the public of the government’s commitment to accountability.
“I want to assure the Ghanaian public, using this platform, that we have not entered into any plea negotiations with anybody that committed an offence that comes within the remit of ORAL. People are being held accountable, and they will be held accountable as far as the ORAL programme is concerned,” he said.
Additionally, the minister raised concerns about what he described as a growing wave of land compensation cases being brought against the state.
“There are a lot of land matters, especially land compensation, and those are becoming a big headache for me as Minister of Justice. There is a tsunami of land compensation cases hitting the courts against the Republic, and the figures are mind-blowing,” he said.
“They will go and dust documents from the archives and claim that the colonial government did not pay compensation for land, and then they take the government to court,” he said, adding that such cases often succeed even at the Supreme Court.
“The last time we did a back-of-the-envelope calculation, we were looking at billions of Ghana cedis in land compensation claims,” he noted.
He added that he has instructed the Solicitor-General to prepare a detailed brief for the President on the issue.
“I have directed the Solicitor-General to put together a brief for the President on the land compensation tsunami that we are having,” he said.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
