"We Will Use Court Of Public Opinion": Sipa Yankey's Counsel

A legal practitioner, Kwame Gyan Appenteng of Kwame Gyan and Associates, a law firm in Accra and counsel for former Health Minister, Dr George Adjah Sipa Yankey, says the legal team for the former Minister will use every available option, including resorting to the court of public opinion, to clear their client of the bribery allegations levelled against him in the Mabey and Johnson (M&J) scandal. �We have the court of law and court of public opinion�which is using the media platform. It is part of the options open to us, we will continue to pursue it, and then proceed to the CHRAJ,� he said. According to Lawyer Kwame Gyan, after the President ordered CHRAJ to probe the scandal, Counsel for Dr. Sipa Yankey both in Ghana and the UK, began their own investigations into the case. Bates Wells and Braithwaite, a London-based firm, and Kwame Gyan and Associates, an Accra-based firm of solicitors, both representing Dr Yankey, began their formal intervention in the case by getting the UK SFO to establish that their client had never been found guilty and convicted of any act of malfeasance involving the UK construction firm. �We wrote to the British Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for clarity, first of all we asked whether his name was mentioned in the trial of the Mabey and Johnson directors. Secondly, we also wanted to know whether the crown court did state for a fact that Dr Sipa Yankey had committed any offence�, whether witnesses came to testify against him,� he told Kwami Sefa Kayi in an interview on �Kokrokoo�. Speaking on PEACEFM on Tuesday, November 10th, lawyer Kwame Gyan who is also a lecturer at the University of Ghana, disclosed that following correspondence between them (counsel for the former Health Minister) and the SFO of the United Kingdom, the SFO conceded that since Dr Yankey was not before the court as a defendant, he could, therefore, not have been charged and convicted by the court. �The hearing before the judge at Southwark Crown Court proceeded on the basis of pleas of guilty by the company (Mabey & Johnson) and agreement about the facts. Our client was not before the court as defendant�The UK SFO in a letter signed by its Director, Mr. Richard Alderman, has proven that Dr Sipa Yankey is not guilty in this case,� he added. Counsel for the embattled former Health Minister revealed that they requested for further information whether the said allegations against Dr. Yankey were ever substantiated or corroborated by anyone before the court, but the UK SFO replied in the negative. According to Lawyer Gyan, on that particular subject, Mr. Alderman, in a letter dated November 2, 2009, wrote, " it was officials of Mabey & Johnson who had been before the court and whose case the SFO had been interested in and, accordingly, pursued, not Dr Yankey and others, and, therefore, the guilty plea which M&J officials had entered before the court made it unnecessary for them to pursue the matter further.�