Court dismisses Bissue’s attempt to stop criminal trial

The High Court in Accra has rejected a motion from former presidential staffer and Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining, Mr Charles Cromwell Bissue, to halt his criminal trial by the Office of the Special Prosecutor. Bissue, along with Raphael Mensah and Dr Naa Dedei Tagoe, faces nine counts of alleged corruption and abuse of public office.

He challenged the prosecution on three grounds: the possibility of an ongoing earlier case, the claim that the police had cleared him, and the assertion that the OSP lacked authority to investigate cases not referred to them by the police. The court requested the original records of the prior proceedings but the defendant's counsel disputed their authenticity.

The court found the grounds for Bissue's arguments to be frivolous and dismissed them. In the initial trial, which began in July 2019, one of the accused, Thomas Andy Owusu, pleaded guilty and was convicted, but Bissue maintained his innocence. The OSP subsequently withdrew the initial charges and filed new ones against Bissue, which his lawyers argued were flawed and incompetent.

The Criminal Division of the High Court granted bail to the accused, each in the amount of GH¢200,000 with two sureties, one of whom must be a guarantor.