The Supreme Court has dismissed an application seeking to temporarily stop the High Court from hearing the case in which former Deputy Executive Director of the National Service Authority, Gifty Oware-Mensah is standing trial for allegedly causing financial loss of more than GH¢38 million to the state.
The application, filed by her lawyer, Gary Nimako Marfo was seeking to halt the trial at the High Court until the apex court determines the constitionality of a practice direction that served as basis for the trial High Court to order the accused to file names and addresses of witnesses statements if any, at the Case Management Conference.
In a ruling today (May 19) the five member panel which had Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie as the President, held that assuming the accused wanted to test the constitionality of the practice direction the trial at the High Court could stil proceed.
"We are of the view that having reviewed the processes so far, the application for stay does not meet the threshold for stay of proceedings.
"The applicant may choose to pursue the interpretation of the practice direction but the trial at the High court may still go on," Chief Justice Baffoe-Bonnie stated.
Background
In October last year, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine, charged Oware-Mensah for allegedly generating 9,934 ghost names on the NSA Central Management System.
The prosecution alleges that she subsequently took control of Blocks of Life Consult Limited by making her mother’s driver one of the company’s directors and presented the company to ADB. She reportedly explained to the bank that she had supplied goods on hire-purchase to the 9,934 ghost names and intended to use their allowances as collateral to secure a facility.
According to the prosecution, the scheme allegedly enabled her to fraudulently obtain GH¢38,458,248.87 from the bank through source deductions from the allowances of the 9,934 non-existent names over an 11-month period.