They were convicted four years ago; they served the sentence, went to the Court of Appeal, and the sentence was dismissed.
The Republic (prosecution) appealed to the Supreme Court and lost the case. It came out at the Supreme Court that the police did what is described in local parlance as 'kululu.'
Graphic Online's Justice Agbenorsi reports that a police investigator's close relationship with a complainant (a foreign national) in a criminal trial has drawn sharp criticism from the Supreme Court, which held that the officer showed a real likelihood of bias against two men who stood trial at the High Court in a $270,000 gold export scam case.
According to court documents, the police investigator admitted to seeing the complainant off at the airport and once said, "every potential caller is an ally."
A five-member panel, presided over by Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie with Justice Kweku Tawiah Ackaah-Boafo delivering the lead opinion, dismissed the Republic's appeal seeking to overturn the acquittal of Kwame Amponsah and Christopher Obareke on charges of conspiracy to defraud, defrauding by false pretence, and money laundering.
The other members of the panel were Justices Ernest Gaewu, Henry Kwofie, and Hafisata Amaleboba.
Finding
The court thought that Detective Chief Inspector George Kingsley Adu, the investigator who eventually handled the case, had grown notably close to the complainant, Roberto Maria Di Lorenzo, over the course of the investigation, even accompanying him to the airport when he left Ghana in December.
By contrast, the same officer treated the original investigator in the case, Chief Inspector Adaba, with suspicion, accusing him during cross-examination of running errands for the accused and giving testimony “full of inaccuracies and untruth”.
Justice Ackaah-Boafo held that this disparity, which is closeness to the complainant paired with hostility toward a fellow officer whose only "offence" was reaching a different investigative conclusion, undermined the prosecution's objectivity.
The court reminded prosecutors that they were "ministers of justice" whose duty was to pursue the truth rather than secure a conviction, and cited Canadian authority for the principle that police and prosecutorial functions must remain independent of each other to avoid miscarriages of justice.
“The duty of the Prosecution, as I understand it, has always been to uphold the administration of justice and to ensure that persons who have contravened the laws of Ghana are duly punished in accordance with due process. However, this duty is not an end in itself. It is circumscribed by the overriding obligation to act fairly, to pursue the truth rather than a conviction, and to place before the Court all material evidence, whether such evidence strengthens or undermines the Prosecution's case.
"My Lords, in my respectful opinion, in a criminal prosecution, the police, as investigators, must remain independent of the prosecutor, who represents the State. This is because the prosecutor must not align himself or herself with the police but must independently assess the investigation conducted by them.
“In sum, in my view, it must be understood that the prosecutor is not an advocate for conviction but a minister of justice whose role is to seek the truth and assist the Court in the administration of justice. This duty must always be borne in mind,” Justice Ackaah-Boafo stated.
Background
Amponsah and Obareke had been tried alongside five others, all still at large, over a 2015 transaction in which Di Lorenzo alleged he was defrauded of over $270,000 after being promised 200 kilogrammes of gold; however, only two kilogrammess were ever delivered.
The High Court convicted the two men in 2019, sentencing them to 24 months' imprisonment with hard labour plus fines, but the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions in 2021, by which time they had already served their sentences.
Reasons
The Supreme Court found that the complainant's absence from trial was fatal to the prosecution's case, since the prosecution relied on hearsay evidence from an interpreter without proving the complainant was genuinely unavailable to testify.
The court also held the evidence tying the two respondents to a prior agreement to defraud the complainant was largely circumstantial, leaving open the reasonable possibility that the true culprits were among the co-accused who remain at large.
Although the court disagreed with the Court of Appeal's finding that the absence of the original investigator alone was fatal to the case, it held this error did not change the outcome.
The appeal was accordingly dismissed and the acquittal affirmed.
