EOCO lacks appetite to probe Cecilia Dapaah’s scandal – OSP

The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has accused the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) of exhibiting a lack of interest in probing the money laundering charges levelled against former Sanitation Minister Cecilia Dapaah.

OSP forwarded its docket on the former minister to EOCO for onward action but EOCO’s Executive Director, Maame Yaa Tiwa Addo-Danquah in a media interaction at the 14th Commonwealth Regional Conference of Heads of Anti-corruption Agencies in Africa on Monday, disclosed that steps were being taken to return the docket to the OSP.

According to Madam Addo-Danquah, whatever they “would have done had already been directed at the police CID” and so there is nothing her outfit could do.

The Director of Strategy, Research, and Communications at the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), Samuel Appiah Darko, said that EOCO simply does not have the appetite to investigate and prosecute the former minister.

“The second point I want to make is this whole idea that the docket that the OSP sent to EOCO was baseless and if you will indulge me, I am going to be a bit detailed, although we are not supposed to do this but our point is that if there is no appetite to want to investigate and prosecute, tell the people of Ghana that there is no appetite but don’t try to put the blame on the OSP,” Mr Darko told the host of the Citi Breakfast Show, Bernard Avle, on Citi FM.

He also rejected claims that the OSP had cleared the former minister.

“The AG saying that we had cleared Cecilia Dapaah of any offence is also not accurate because the OSP has never cleared Cecilia Dapaah because when you say you have cleared someone, it means that you have investigated and come to the conclusion that no offence has been committed.”