The Office of the Attorney General has opposed an application seeking to postpone judgment in the ongoing criminal trial involving the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi Boasiako, over alleged illegal mining activities at Samreboi.
The application was filed by lawyer Samuel Atta Akyea, who recently took over the legal representation of Chairman Wontumi. However, the Attorney General’s Office has urged the court to dismiss the request and allow the case to proceed to judgment.
According to the prosecution, a 13-paragraph affidavit in opposition was filed on Thursday, June 25, by Senior State Attorney Nana Ama Prempeh.
The affidavit argues that the application lacks merit because the accused has been represented by counsel throughout the trial, and the withdrawal of his former lawyer was voluntary rather than due to circumstances beyond counsel’s control.
“In a 13-paragraph affidavit in opposition deposed to by Nana Ama Prempeh, a Senior State Attorney, and filed this afternoon, the Attorney General strongly argues that the accused person having been represented by counsel throughout the trial and that counsel only withdrew voluntarily and not for cause, the proper source for a new lawyer to procure the records of and any brief or briefing on the case is the outgoing counsel and not the Court’s Registry,” the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) Secretariat said in a Facebook post.
The prosecution further argues that Mr Atta Akyea’s request to obtain case records directly from the court registry, instead of through the previous lawyer, was not made in good faith. It therefore insists that the application should be dismissed to allow the trial to proceed without further delay.
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