The Court of Appeal has struck out as withdrawn an application by the Attorney-General seeking to stay execution of its decision acquitting and discharging former Microfinance and Small Loans Centre Chief Executive Officer Christine Sedina Tamakloe-Attionu.
The State told the court on Wednesday, 12 August 2026, that it had filed a notice of withdrawal two days earlier, bringing the application to an end. The withdrawal does not end the State’s pursuit of the case. Prosecutors have filed the appeal process at the Supreme Court, moving the fight over the acquittal to the apex court.
Lawyers for the former MASLOC boss objected to how the withdrawal was handled, arguing that the Attorney-General should have sought the court’s permission before filing the notice, particularly as Wednesday had been set aside for the ruling on that very application.
Why the State wanted the acquittal suspended
The Attorney-General had asked the Court of Appeal to suspend the effect of the acquittal pending determination of a further appeal, an unusual request given that the beneficiary of the order was a person the court had cleared of all charges.
The State’s reasoning turned on the risk of losing her. Allowing the acquittal to take immediate effect, prosecutors argued, could create an opportunity for Tamakloe-Attionu to leave the jurisdiction, potentially making it difficult to pursue the appeal.
That concern carries a particular history in this case. Her original trial ran without her, and the State spent years securing her return through international legal channels before she stood in a Ghanaian courtroom at all.
The defence objects to how the withdrawal happened
Counsel for Tamakloe-Attionu, Sidney Antonio, told reporters after proceedings that the defence considered the procedure irregular, since the court had already fixed the day for its decision.
“Today’s date was given by the court for the court to deliver its ruling, and we were just served yesterday with a notice of withdrawal. We believe the proper thing should have been for the Attorney-General to have sought leave of the court before going ahead and withdrawing, because today’s business was for delivering the ruling and that should have gone on today”.
Counsel for Tamakloe-Attionu, Sidney Antonio
The objection points at a live question of practice. A ruling already written and scheduled for delivery would have produced a reasoned decision on whether a court may suspend its own acquittal, and the withdrawal removed that reasoning from the record a day before it was due.
A fresh application the defence has not seen
Antonio was asked about reports that the Attorney-General had filed a similar application at the Supreme Court after withdrawing the one before the Court of Appeal. He said the defence had received nothing. “We have not been served formally with any such motion, but as you have heard we have also heard about it,” he said.
That gap between what has been filed and what has been served leaves the defence responding to press reports rather than to court documents, and it means the shape of the State’s argument before the Supreme Court remains unknown to the other side.
The acquittal that triggered the appeal
The development follows the Court of Appeal’s decision on 30 July 2026 to overturn the ten-year prison sentence imposed on Tamakloe-Attionu by the Accra High Court in April 2024. The appellate court acquitted and discharged her after concluding that the prosecution had failed to prove its case.
The High Court had convicted her on 78 counts, including conspiracy, stealing, causing financial loss to the state and money laundering, and sentenced her to ten years’ imprisonment with hard labour. The appellate ruling set aside the conviction on the finding that the prosecution had not proved those counts beyond a reasonable doubt.
An acquittal grounded in evidentiary failure rather than procedural error strikes at the substance of the case the State built, which is what makes the Attorney-General’s determination to appeal significant. The reversal covered the entire charge sheet rather than isolated counts.
A case that crossed two continents
The proceedings have run for more than two years across two jurisdictions. The Accra High Court sentenced Tamakloe-Attionu in absentia in April 2024, and the sentence remained unenforced while she stayed outside the country.
United States Marshals arrested her in January 2026 following a formal extradition request from Ghana. By June 2026 she had been extradited and placed in the custody of prison officials, apparently beginning the sentence handed down two years earlier. The Court of Appeal cleared her weeks later.
That sequence, running from extradition to imprisonment to acquittal within a matter of weeks, marks one of the more striking reversals in a high-profile financial crime case involving a former state institution executive.
What the Supreme Court will now decide
The withdrawal at the Court of Appeal leaves two questions for the apex court. The first concerns whether the State can secure any order restraining Tamakloe-Attionu while its appeal proceeds. The second, larger question is whether the acquittal itself survives.
Neither has a settled answer, and the State has not made public the grounds on which it intends to challenge the appellate ruling. Until the Supreme Court lists the matter, Tamakloe-Attionu remains a person whom the Court of Appeal has cleared of all charges connected to the case.
For the Attorney-General’s Department, the stakes extend past this one defendant. A second reversal would restore a conviction the State spent years and considerable diplomatic effort to enforce. A second defeat would close a prosecution that began with 78 counts and ended with none.
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