
Cecilia Dapaah’s request for expedited hearing of cash seizure case approved by court
Cecilia Dapaah, former minister of sanitation, requested that the lawsuit involving the seizure of her money and the freezing of her bank accounts be heard quickly. The High Court granted her motion.
As a result, the case has been postponed until tomorrow, October 12.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) submitted a request to the court asking for authorization to keep blocking Cecilia Dapaah’s bank accounts and seizing money that was discovered at her and her husband’s home.
Cecila Dapaah and husband’s lawyers appeal before court
The attorneys for Cecilia Dapaah and her husband had argued that the Office of the Special Prosecutor would not be “prejudiced by the granting of their application to abridge time”.
This is because the application to shorten the time for the hearing of the case is based on the grounds that the delay in hearing the matter is “causing undue hardships to the respondents.”
Additionally, the application for confirmation is a repeat application.
Lawyers from the OSP however opposed the application claiming that Cecilia Dapaah and her husband are seeking to prevent them from “responding to their affidavit in opposition to the substantive application for confirmation of freezing and seizure orders.”
Lawyers of Cecilia Dapaah led by Victoria Barth said the application for the abridgement of time is further grounded by the failure of the OSP to serve the confirmation application on them earlier.
The application was filed on September 5, but the lawyers claim their client did not receive notice of her decision to eliminate the requirement for personal service until September 20.
The Special Prosecutor’s office’s attorneys, however, countered that the request was improper because their procedure is “an originating notice on motion which is a process that requires personal service.”
Cecilia Dapaah’s attorneys disagree with OSP
The attorneys for Cecilia Dapaah, however, disagreed with this assertion, stating that “it cannot be correct that a party is not entitled to waive personal service of a process and to say I have instructed a lawyer to receive on my behalf.”
CNR reported that according to her solicitors, “the respondent filed an application on August 8, 2023, with a return date of October 18, seeking the same reliefs as those in their application.
I refer to this as a duplicate application since the previous application was predicated on the identical facts and data that they want to rely upon in the second application.
The anti-graft organisation, however, claimed that this viewpoint is mistaken.
According to attorneys for the OSP, “The substantive application is a new process free from any earlier considerations. This application is based on events that occurred on September 5, not on July 24.
After carefully weighing these considerations, the court agreed to approve the request, with a minor alteration, so that the confirmation application hearing would take place on Thursday, October 12, rather than the originally scheduled date of October 18.