Samuel Atta Akyea, the lead defence counsel for former National Signals Bureau Director-General, Kwabena Adu-Boahene and his wife, Angela Adjei-Boateng, has rejected suggestions that he is deliberately delaying the trial, insisting that he will not appear in court during the legal vacation.
Speaking on TV3, Mr Atta Akyea defended his decision not to attend court in six days as ordered by court, and questioned why the Adu-Boahene case should be treated as a special case during the legal vacation.
“Has he not told you that I’ve been working the whole year? When was the time that I said I won’t come to court? And you believe that I shouldn’t have my vacation as the Chief Justice is having his vacation?” he argued.
He said Order 79 provides for legal vacation and argued that the period is intended to allow lawyers to rest, rather than for lengthy criminal trials to continue. He strongly alleged bias and disregard for protocol.
“When the [court] is on vacation, and you say that there are some special cases that they should come and hear, you should justify it. What is special between a murder case and Kwabena Adu Boahene’s case? Why are the murder cases not being heard?”
Mr Atta Akyea said continuing with his client’s case during the vacation was for “somebody’s unquestionable pleasure — a fetish of a pleasure — that these are special cases by my own thinking. The rest of them don’t matter.
“You think we can’t question discretionary powers, administrative decisions? They are all embedded in the constitution.” He also questioned the urgency surrounding the case. “Why are we in an ambulance mode to try these cases?” he asked.
He said Adu Boahene’s legal team would not endorse what he considers a departure from the conventional approach to legal vacation.
Asked about the judge’s directive that he appear in court on August 17 or his client would have to represent himself, Mr Atta Akyea said emphatically: “I’m not going to court at all.”
He questioned the reasoning behind the directive and said allowing his client to represent himself would be as inappropriate as “asking a carpenter to go and do a surgery”.
“What is special about this case?” he asked.
Mr Atta Akyea said the prosecution could not answer that and other important questions, and wondered if “the inflation of Ghana would go down,” with the economy improved when these cases were tried.
“What is the emergency about these cases? They can’t answer. It’s because the other cases are of no consequence to the realm,” he said.
Court adjourns trial to August 17, 2026 The comments followed proceedings at the High Court in Accra where the trial was adjourned after the accused persons’ lawyers failed to appear.
The court was told that efforts to reach the lawyers had proved difficult with some reportedly engaged in script marking outside Accra.
Dr Justice Srem-Sai said Mr Atta Akyea had written to the Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, the court Registrar and the Ghana Bar Association indicating that he would not attend court during the legal vacation.
However, the Deputy Attorney General, Dr Justice Srem-Sai, argued that the decision on whether courts should sit during the legal vacation rests with the Chief Justice and not individual lawyers.
He said lawyers who have genuine reasons for being absent should apply to the court for an adjournment.
Presiding judge Justice Francis Achibonga noted that the accused persons’ lawyers were present when the case was previously adjourned to August 11 but were absent without providing a reason.
Justice Achibonga, however, said it would not be fair to require the accused persons to continue cross-examining the fourth prosecution witness without their lawyers.
The court, therefore, granted the accused persons an adjournment to decide on the future of their legal representation. The judge warned that if the accused persons appear in court without lawyers at the next sitting, they will be required to continue the cross-examination themselves, and failure to do so would result in the witness being discharged.
The case has been adjourned to Monday, August 17, 2026. Adu-Boahene, wife face multiple charges Adu-Boahene and his wife are standing trial on charges including stealing, conspiracy to steal, defrauding by false pretences, wilfully causing financial loss to the State, using public office for profit, collaboration to use public office for profit, obtaining public property by false statements, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Lead investigator with the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), Frank Marshall Cromwell, has told the High Court that Adu-Boahene and his wife issued three cheques totalling $7 million into an account jointly owned by them. The evidence forms part of the prosecution’s case in the ongoing trial.
Source: classfmonline.com
