Lawyers of Dr. George Sipa Yankey, former Minister of Health, are mounting intense pressure on the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) of the United Kingdom over allegations they made in court in the Mabey and John (M&J) bribery case.
They have written a strong worded letter dated 22nd October to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) of the United Kingdom (UK), challenging them over the way they handled the allegations leveled against their client in the case, requesting an immediate provision of evidence or retraction.
Bates Wells & Braithwaite (BWB), a law firm based in the UK, first of all pointed out the mistake made in the Prosecution�s opening notes to the Southwark Crown Court, by referring to Sipa Yankey as the then Director of Legal and International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning of the Ghanaian Government (an office that never existed), when he was rather the Director of Legal and Private Sector Development between 1996 and 1998. His name was misspelt as Yanki instead of Yankey.
Bates Wells and Braithwaite maintained that their client was not in the capacity to influence the securing or maintaining of any contracts for the building of roads and bridges for M&J. it made no sense for M&J to bribe MR. Yankey when the Ministry of Roads and Highways was the authorized ministry for the award of contracts for such projects.
The legal brains are challenging the SFO to provide any evidence on payments made into Dr. Yankey�s accounts or any other evidence on which they depended to make such allegations.
They debunked the subtle attempts by the SFO to link the case to the Quality Grain case which the trial judge clearly stated was not a case of stealing but that of causing financial loss to the state; they also made it clear that that trail was politically motivated; therefore it was improper on the part of the Crown Court to accept it as part of evidence against the hardworking Minister.
Justice Afreh, the Trial Judge in that case stated clearly that, �this case has aroused considerable interest. There is widespread belief that the accused persons are being tried for stealing millions of US Dollars or corruption. This is not correct.�
Ex-President Kufuor was mentioned as having played an active role in the prosecution of Dr. Yankey and other former NDC ministers.
They advised the SFO to take steps to correct the erroneous impression created about the earlier case and requested that they �Accept that there was no determination or finding of fact by the Southwark Crown Court on 25th September, 2009, or indeed, at any other time, in respect of the allegations referred to above and made against our client by the prosecution and there has been no conviction of our client by the court in respect of the allegations made by the prosecution.�
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