Lawyers of the embattled Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, have demanded for the full particulars of the allegations levelled against the Minister to enable him respond to them appropriately.
Lead Lawyer of the Minister, Gabby Otchere-Darko insinuated that, because the punishments his client is likely to face should the committee find him culpable of the allegations levelled against him are dire, it will only be fair if his client is given all particulars that support the allegations before he is called upon to answer questions pertaining to them.
“Our issue is simple, per article 23 of the constitution, since it is a quasi-judicial process, our client deserves a fair hearing. Indeed in the events of matters not going well, he faces potentially the severest punishment that a Minister can get which is removal from office
“So the first part of our request is full particulars of the facts in support of each of the allegations contained in the letter.”
Gabby Otchere-Darko, Lawyer of Finance Minister
Prior to Mr. Otchere-Darko’s concern, lead proponents of the censure motion, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, the Minority Leader and Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, Ranking Member on Parliament’s Finance committee had given a tall lists of documents they are tendering in to the committee as evidence in support of the minority groups’ allegations against the Minister.
Gabby Otchere-Darko said that even though the proponents have given a whole list of the documents as evidence, the documents were not made available to his client prior to the committee’s sitting and that “will lead to an expedition which is wide,” particularly because they have just a week to respond to all the claims of the proponents.
The Lawyer of the Minister suggested that because of how voluminous the documents the proponents are referring to are, his team will need not less than two months to provide answers to the questions that may come up during the Minister’s interrogation before the committee.
“If you give us PIAC [Public Interest Accountability Committee] reports, with all due respect, it will take us about two (2) months to go through all that and it will not be fair to the Minister of Finance to be ambushed and right here, without any preparation to start answering questions.”
Gabby Otchere-Darko, Lawyer of the Finance Minister
Meanwhile, Co-Chair of the committee, Dr. Dominic Ayine noted that all the documents the proponents intended to lead evidence from were in the public domain, and that the Finance Minister had a fair knowledge of the contents of all the documents.
“All the documents listed are public documents and some of them are authored or are in the custody of the Finance Minister himself,” Dr. Ayine said.
The lead Lawyer for the Minister opined that even though his client might have seen the documents, his team wants “the charges to be complete with its particulars before [they] are able to look into the documents.”
Minority’s Evidence
The minority group in Parliament which is the proponent of the censure motion for the removal of Finance Minister, Ken-Ofori Atta has accused the Minister of seven (7) offences.
The allegations of the minority were: conflict of interest, unconstitutional withdrawals from the Consolidated Fund, illegal payment of oil revenues into offshore accounts, deliberate and dishonest misreporting of economic data to Parliament, fiscal recklessness, alarming incompetence and gross mismanagement of the Ghanaian economy.
Representing the minority at the adhoc committee sitting today were Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu and Ranking Member on Parliament’s Finance committee, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson.
Haruna Iddrisu and Ato Forson referred to a number of documents as evidence to their claims that the Finance Minister has mismanged Ghana’s economy by committing the seven (7) offences listed above.
The list of documents were: The Physical Responsibility Act of 2018 (Act 982; in particular section 2 and 4), the bugdet policy statements of 2022, 2021 and 2019, the Public Financial Management Act, the Bank of Ghana Act and IMF Staff reports of 2019, 2020 and 2021.
According to the Minority Leader, with the above documents, they “are seeking to lead evidence to suppport his [the Finance Minister’s] breaches of them” and ultimately, to advocate “strongly that his performance is incredibly disappointing and that he is not fit to be Minister for Finance.”
