Plea bargaining not immunity - A-G tells Cambridge Economic Crime summit

The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Godfred Yeboah Dame, has given an assurance that the new plea bargaining law, which gives some form of reprieve to persons accused of certain crimes, will not be used to protect people from accountability.

Delivering a keynote address at the International Symposium on Economic Crime at the University of Cambridge, the United Kingdom, Mr Dame said plea bargaining was not about accused persons going scot-free, but ensured that such persons were also held accountable for their crimes in the interest of society.

He said any attempt to use the law to shield accused persons from taking responsibility for their deeds would defeat the purpose of criminal laws and the entire criminal justice system.

He, therefore, advised state prosecutors not to be motivated solely by the recovery of proceeds of crimes in plea bargaining deals, as such a move could put their integrity under scrutiny.

“Where prosecutors are motivated by the sole objective of recovering supposed proceeds of crime in a situation where the accused persons plainly refuse to admit responsibility for the commission of those crimes, an unwanted paradox inimical to the rationale for the existence of criminal laws occurs.

“In my respectful view, therefore, plea bargaining should as much as possible be entered into on the basis of a clear acknowledgment of responsibility for the commission of crime, especially financial and economic crimes, which directly affect the use of the national purse,” he said.

The A-G stressed that the only situation in which prosecutors should accept plea bargaining without admission of liability was when there was not sufficient and compelling evidence to secure conviction.

“It is only when the commission of an economic crime may be impossible to prove or the necessity for a trial of same is outweighed by more compelling considerations that a plea agreement or a DPA, which is not founded on an admission of liability, may be entered into,” he added.

Symposium

The 41st Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime is a global platform that brings stakeholders and experts in the criminal justice system together to discuss and share ideas on how to deal with economic crimes to promote economic growth across the world.

This year’s event, which is on the theme: “Suspect wealth”, focused on issues relating to unexplained wealth, identification, interdiction and control of suspect wealth, and how law enforcement and other players in the criminal justice system could collaborate to stem such global crimes.

In June 2022, Parliament passed the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) (Amendment) Bill, 2021, to provide for plea bargaining in the administration of criminal justice.

The law allows an accused person to make some concessions, either by wholly or partly admitting his or her guilt, or assisting in the investigation and prosecution of others, in exchange for the dropping of charges against the accused or receiving reduced sentences.

Other elements of the law include the right of an accused person to enter into plea bargaining with the prosecutor before judgment by the court, the format of the negotiations, the benefits of plea bargaining for an accused person, what the agreement should entail and the option for either party (the prosecution and the accused) to withdraw from plea negotiations.

Plea bargaining

However, plea bargaining is not applicable to offences such as treason, rape, genocide, robbery, kidnapping, murder, attempted murder, abduction, defilement, piracy and offences related to public elections.

Mr Dame said regional integration presented further complexities in the effort to curb illicit transfer of funds and concealment of assets. In Africa’s context, he said while the launch of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) presented Africa with its greatest opportunity to show to the world the strength of its potential and the entrepreneurial spirit, it had unleashed a new set of issues of concern to law enforcement authorities.

“These take the form of migratory problems, how to deal with the phenomenon of corruption within the context of the AfCFTA, money laundering and environmental challenges,” he stated.

Mr Dame therefore stressed the need to ramp up international cooperation in confronting financial and economic crime, saying many African countries were signatories to international conventions such as the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) and the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption.

“These agreements must be deployed to facilitate cross-border cooperation in assets recovery,” the Attorney-General stated.

He said tracing of assets was largely international and multi-jurisdictional, hence “we must bear in mind the peculiarities of asset tracing and fighting economic crime generally within the context of specific continents and regions”. 

Collaboration

Mr Dame said financial crimes were inimical to economic growth and, therefore, there was the need for countries to deepen collaboration in the tracing and recovery of proceeds of such crimes to serve as a disincentive for people to engage in such crimes.

“Apart from being simply unconscionable for perpetrators of economic crime to conceal or keep the fruits of their crimes, for the relatively less developed world such as Ghana, the phenomenon breeds mistrust in the system and denies the nation much needed revenue for the execution of lofty development projects,” he added.

Expertise

The Founder, Executive Director and Co-Chairman of Jesus College, Cambridge, Professor Barry A. K. Rider, said the 41st international symposium on economic crime brought together, from across the globe, a unique level and depth of expertise to address one of the biggest threats facing the stability and development of all our economies.

The overarching theme for this year’s symposium focused on what had become a primary strategy in addressing not just acquisitive criminal activity, but also the control of wealth by those who posed a threat to our well-being.

“We have moved far from the simple and perhaps naive mantra that ‘crime should not pay’ and the belief that we can undermine the motive and funding of criminal and subversive enterprises by simply interdicting the proceeds of their misconduct,” he said.

Prof. Rider said to facilitate the identification of ‘suspect wealth’, law enforcement had imposed ever increasing burdens on those who minded other people’s wealth and enlisted financial institutions and their advisors as ‘frontline’ troops in the war against an ever-broader class of miscreants.

“We now depend on intelligence and especially financial intelligence to enable us to disrupt criminal activity and mitigate its consequences,” the founder of Jesus College said, citing the inability of criminal justice systems to adequately address fraud and, in particular, organised crime – let alone terrorist structures, with efficacy.