Seven revelations Richard Jakpa made that shocked the court in the “Fake Ambulance” trial

There is no denying the fact that the country and the media have been caught up in the frenzy of the trial of the minority leader and two other accused persons over the procurement of ambulances that were deemed to be unfit for use by the State.

At the heart of the trial is the authorization of 2.37 million euros by Dr Ato Forson, the then Deputy Minister for Finance, which seemed to be against the conviction of Ministers senior to him at the time.

Finance Minister Seth Terkper and Health Minister Sherry Aryittey (now deceased) blatantly refused to go along with Dr Ato Forson’s decision to pay for the ambulances with resources contrary to what parliament had approved. The ambulances also did not meet the stated requirements and basic features of an ambulance, occasioning financial loss to the State.

The protagonist for the State, Attorney General Godfred Yeboah Dame has been pilloried by the opposition National Democratic Congress relating to his professional decisions after his phone conversation with the third accused Richard Jakpa was leaked to the National Democratic Congress, the main opposition to the government who used it as a subject matter of their press conference.

It has since come to light that the audio recording was preceded by a series of WhatsApp conversations and in-person meetings initiated by the same third accused, Richard Jakpa, a businessman who is being cross-examined for his role in the ‘fake ambulance’ transaction for which he is standing trial.

The third accused seems to be a darling of the media because he throws bombshells, albeit largely unsubstantiated, in open court and the media loves it. In his last appearance in court, Jakpa was in his element and seemed to confound his case and that of his co-accused unwittingly or accidentally.

Here are seven of those bombshells.

1. I don’t trust the Judge. She has an agenda against me.

The third accused told the court of a private conversation between the AG, Justice Yonny Kulendi (a Justice of the Supreme Court who is also Jakpa’s cousin) that he cannot trust the trial judge because she has an axe to grind with him.

This was in response to his plea for the AG to enter a nolle prosequi or to stop prosecuting him. According to him, the AG replied that he was sure Jakpa would get off at the’ No case Submission’ stage or he would eventually be freed because his role in the matter was not all that crucial.

Jakpa wanted a quick decision to stop his prosecution because he did not trust the judge who he believes has a personal vendetta against him. In essence, Jakpa does not believe that he will get or is getting a fair trial. He says the AG should have stopped prosecuting. This is the trigger for his angst.

2. I wanted to become a Prosecution Witness against Ato Forson

Richard Jakpa told the court that to secure his freedom and for the Attorney-General to stop prosecuting him, he wanted to become a prosecution witness to testify against Dr Ato Forson.

Curiously, Jakpa in his recorded tape of the Attorney-General is heard saying that his conscience was against testifying against an innocent man Dr Ato Forson.

Richard Jakpa’s conscience would not have suffered at all as a prosecution’s witness had the Attorney General not denied him that opportunity.

Faced with the continuation of the trial, he suddenly rolled out his scheme to botch the entire prosecution. He changed his stance on the guilt of Ato Forson.

Jakpa’s honesty and consistency were called into question by his admission. It seems irreconcilable that in one breadth, he was willing to testify against Ato Forson but on the recorded tape he was singing otherwise.

3. I am less guilty than my co-accused

In a startling admission, Jakpa asserts that no matter his level of guilt or complicity in the case, he is not as guilty as his co-accused. Notably, he singles out the second accused as being at the front and center of the crime.

The second accused, Sylvester Anemana was at one time the Chief Director of the Ministry of Health. The Attorney General has discontinued his trial on the grounds of aggravated ill health.

He is almost always attending dialysis sessions and his conditioning has worsened over the past two years.  The magnanimity of the Attorney General seems to have ticked off Jakpa wrongly, who believes he rather should have been the beneficiary of the nolle prosequi or the discharge decision.

4. Seth Terkper and Sherry Aryittey are Evil, sabotaged, and never supported the Ambulance deal.

Richard Jakpa implicated Ato Forson and himself [Jakpa] when he essentially told the court that Dr Ato Forson’s key witness, Seth Terkper was an evil man who was against the ambulance transaction from start to finish.

He detailed a day when Sherry Aryittey (now deceased), the former Minister of Health, and Seth Terkper, the former Minister of Finance had met in the office of the finance minister to sabotage the ambulance deal and derail it.

However, Jakpa got wind of the meeting, rushed there when Sherry Aryittey had left, and had verbal exchanges with Seth Terkper whom he accused with his co-conspirator Sherry Aryittey of evil.

Madam Aryittey’s letter ordering the contractors to stop producing the ambulances because the time for the contract had elapsed became the foundation on which the charge of willfully causing financial loss to the state was preferred against the accused persons.

Though Dr Ato Forson claims he had authorisation from Seth Terkper to pursue the deal, Jakpa says Terkper never supported the deal and was against it right from the start to the end and that he even had reason to call him out in 2017 on Joy FM for sabotaging the procurement and payment of the ambulances.

5. I will fight the AG with my last drop of blood.

Jakpa confirmed to the court that the Attorney-General’s decision to prosecute him has cost him his reputation and millions of dollars which can never be recovered whether he is acquitted or jailed.

He has therefore “declared war” on the Attorney General and will fight him “till the last drop of his blood”. In Jakpa’s words, “Since he (Attorney-General) has decided to use his legal skills to take my liberty from me, I will also use my underworld skills to fight him. I have therefore declared war on him.”

6. Justice Kulendi was the AG’s protection.

Richard Jakpa told the court he had met and spoken to the Minister on several occasions in his cousin’s (Justice Kulendi’s) house. The decision by the A-G to meet Jakpa without his lawyers has been described as being against his professional ethos.

Jakpa told the court that for as long as the AG was meeting him in Justice Kulendi’s house, he did not feel that the A-G had overstepped his professional boundaries.

“However the day he chose to call me on the phone outside of Justice Kulendi’s house, I knew I had him and that is why I recorded him” ostensibly to show that he was being unprofessional because he had left the clear protection of Justice Kulendi, my cousin’s house.

Jakpa further details a chilling account of how Justice Kulendi had to restrain him one night after the Attorney-General had declined to stop prosecuting him.

He considered this as an act of betrayal. Jakpa said he was so angry with the AG that he had to be restrained by his cousin, Justice Kulendi, from following the AG after he had left Justice Kulendi’s house.

This was to avert any unfortunate incident which could have occurred had he (Jakpa) followed the Attorney-General.

7. “Nothing spoils if I sent him documents he had already used”

Richard Jakpa had claimed in the media and his evidence-in-chief that he had supplied the prosecution with the documents used to make the case against the accused.

However, it was established during cross-examination that by the time Jakpa claims to have sent the documents, the Attorney General had already filed the same documents and many more.

These documents had been served on Jakpa and his lawyers. Confronted by the weight of the evidence against his claim, all Jakpa could say was; “if he had used the documents in his case before, I sent it to him, well then nothing spoil.”

Jakpa’s claim had fallen flat in the face of the evidence presented to him. The cross-examination of Richard Jakpa continues on Thursday, 27 June 2024.

Reporting by Wilberforce Asare in Accra

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