Lawyers for Kwabena Adu-Boahene, the former Director-General of the National Signals Bureau (NSB), and his wife, Angela Adjei Boateng, have accused Attorney-General, Dr Dominic Ayine of violating their clients’ rights by publicly declaring them guilty before trial.
Their concerns follow a press conference held by the Attorney-General on March 24, 2025, where Dr Ayine linked Adu-Boahene’s arrest to an alleged $7 million fraud involving a cybersecurity contract.
In a statement issued by legal firm Zoe, Akyea & Co., the lawyers described the Attorney-General’s remarks as “prejudicial”, arguing that they amounted to a public conviction while investigations were still ongoing.
“The power to investigate any Ghanaian for alleged criminal offences has no party colours,” the statement read. “It is a painstaking exercise to ensure that the rule of law is observed and that persons with material stakes are not unfairly targeted by those who wield the powers of the State.”
The legal team further accused Dr Ayine of engaging in a “trial by media”, arguing that the Attorney-General had “cheapened the press conference by pronouncing our clients guilty in the court of public opinion.”
They maintained that prosecution must be based on evidence and due process, rather than public narratives that could prejudice judicial proceedings.
Adu-Boahene’s lawyers have vowed to challenge what they describe as “unmitigated prejudice with defamatory consequences”, insisting that their clients are being unfairly targeted.
They also warned that any attempts to undermine their right to a fair trial would be contested in the appropriate legal forum.
Below is the full text of the statement from Kwabena Adu-Boahene’s legal team:
ZOE, AKYEA & CO.
LEGAL PRACTITIONERS & NOTARIES PUBLIC
24th March, 2025
IN THE MATTER OF THE VIOLATION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS OF KWABENA ADU BOAHENE AND ANGELA ADJEI BOATENG; AND THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL’S RESET VERSION OF THE RULE OF LAW
We act as lawyers for Kwabena Adu Boahene and Angela Adjei Boateng.
Midmorning today, the 24th day of March, 2025, the Learned Attorney-General of the realm, Hon. Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, in his reset version of the rule of law, and romancing the press, pronounced our Clients guilty of state looting, in the court of public opinion, and cheapened the press conference by saying our Clients are still being investigated by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO).
The Learned Attorney-General has been a distinguished lecturer of law and we cannot fathom why he would use the power of the press rather than his advocacy at the Bar to feed the general public with his prejudicial and skewed information which he unprofessionally called evidence to poison the general public and by extension the entire world against our Clients.
The power to investigate any Ghanaian for alleged criminal offences has no party colours. It is a painstaking exercise to ensure that the rights of citizens are not abused and their personalities rubbished by those who wield the powers of the State to conduct that sacred exercise.
All professional investigations—and not party investigations—are devoid of razzmatazz and propaganda. The suspect, who is the subject matter of the investigation, should not be disgraced before the assemblage of the so-called facts which will point him out as an accused person.
A suspect is not an accused person until the facts clinically put together through investigations graduate into a docket after the suspect is formally charged.
When a suspect is being investigated, he is entitled to bail for the simple reason that the investigating body cannot treat him as an individual already pronounced guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction. The criminal jurisprudence the world over frowns upon enquiry bail being used as an emotive weapon of punishment against persons who may be potentially innocent after adduction of evidence, not in the New Patriot Party headquarters, but before a court of competent jurisdiction.
When the Attorney-General and/or a prosecutor has assembled facts and not propaganda against a citizen of Ghana, the individual is then arraigned before a court of law. The charges are read against the accused who may plead guilty, which opens the door for his conviction and sentence.
When a plea of not guilty is entered for the accused, it kick-starts a criminal trial in which the Attorney-General or his lawful representative leaves the realm of emotions and party-frenzy to demonstrate through evidence why his fellow Ghanaian should be convicted on the account of a criminal offence duly committed.
We need not stress that from the arrest all the way to the point of conviction, if ever, the accused person has a constitutional right to a lawyer of his choice.
Archibald, one of the leading expositors of Criminal Law Practice and Evidence, calls what is contained in the dossier as “The Theory of the Prosecution”. We have underlined this kindergarten position of the law to expose the fact that when a case from the highest level of the Attorney-General is determined in the court of public opinion, then the matter has degenerated from prosecution—which must not be dressed in NDC colours—to persecution, whose oxygen and impunity is politically-induced and very much an affront to the rule of law.
With this as a prologue, we want to put the case of our Clients in context. Mr. Kwabena Adu Boahene cannot be called a common criminal, and neither can his wife, Angela Adjei Boateng. Prior to this sordid exposé, Mr. Kwabena Adu Boahene was the immediate Director of the National Signal Bureau and is a man who is networked internationally. His wife, Angela, has never been a woman of straw and she is doing considerable good business.
On Thursday, the 20th day of March 2025, Mr. Kwabena Adu Boahene arrived at Kotoka International Airport on a British Airways flight from the United Kingdom. It is totally false that he flew economy class to disguise himself, as the Attorney-General was strenuously projecting it to be. Our Client was in the business class, a fact which is easily verifiable.
It beggars belief that a criminal should be audacious enough to fly out of the jurisdiction through Kotoka International Airport, a security area, and return on his own free will to Accra while the criminal routes of the Togo and the Ivory Coast borders are the safe options available to him. Obviously, the Attorney-General is using a different eyeglass, and we cannot fault him for that.
On his arrival at the airport, Mr. Kwabena Adu Boahene reclined at the Commercially Important Persons (CIP) lounge. A ruse was created that there were Immigration issues with his passport and he was wanted at the open place where the passengers of all aircraft landing at Kotoka International Airport check out. Our law-abiding Client got into that open space only to be handcuffed for public ridicule and ferried to the EOCO cells where he is still languishing.
The next day, Friday, the 21st day of March 2025, his wife walked to the premises of EOCO to find out how her husband was doing, and she was immediately arrested. Rehearsed criminals do not voluntarily go to the place of their arrest. They run away and become fugitives from justice. Again, when the undertaking is persecution, it is easy to confuse decent and well-cultured Ghanaians from common criminals. As at today, Angela has been incarcerated by EOCO on the account of what the Attorney-General is using to contaminate our Clients in the press and unprofessionally expose them to public opprobrium.
It is difficult to come to terms with the fact that the Attorney-General is comfortable with the press where there is “no proof beyond reasonable doubt.” The Attorney-General has become the media persecutor of our Clients, a judge in his own court while simultaneously asserting that he is still investigating the case. This is counter-intuitive. We do not believe a change of government through constitutional means should degenerate into a reset version of rule of law in which the press is fed with a pathetic one-sided and untested position by the leader of the Bar. This unmitigated prejudice with defamatory consequences will be prosecuted in the appropriate forum.
We are shocked that at the press conference, the Attorney-General was even entertaining himself with issues of plea bargaining when the statements of the suspects are yet to be taken.
It was even laughable that the age of Angela was lost on the Attorney-General given the fact that EOCO has seized her British passport, which obviously had her bio-data.
It is unfortunate that the wealth of citizens of Ghana with constitutional rights is being advertised to the whole world until EOCO finds a correlation between the “proceeds of the alleged crime” and the property acquisitions.
Kwabena became the Deputy Director of the National Signal Bureau (NSB) in 2016 during the NDC time in Government. The NPP in power did not jettison his competences and vast experience in the field. Kwabena has been doing business well before he was appointed by the NPP Government to the high office of Director, NSB.
It is very unprofessional to assert that the properties purportedly owned by our Clients were acquired after 2018 when there is no verification that they belong to our Clients using criminal proceeds from their work. With respect, this disjointed logic exposes the bad faith and the desperate attempt to give political colour to the Attorney-General’s own self-confession that investigations are still ongoing. The Attorney-General’s appetite to eat uncooked meals is amazing.
Today, Ghana is at the crime scene and the constitution has been turned upside down, and everybody can be guilty before the evidence. Democracy is sitting upside down.
I was very much surprised this morning when our Clients were denied the right to counsel by EOCO with a reset Constitution that I could not have the confidentiality of talking to my Clients and giving them the appropriate legal advice prior to interrogation unless an official of EOCO listens to the lawyer-client solemn engagement. This reset rule of law defies my modest thirty-one (31) years of legal practice.
In today’s Ghana, the Attorney-General is acutely aware he has violated the rights of our Clients relating to the not more than forty-eight (48) hour incarceration constitutional prescription and tells the whole world that he can play with the bail issues by releasing our Clients and rearresting them.
We are seeing through the dastardly agenda that let us in the court of public opinion besmear Kwabena and Angela with filth and guilt so that in the event of a court of law, equity and good conscience should find the case of the Attorney-General as propaganda and not evidence, we can feed frenzy to the citizenry that yes indeed, it is the NPP judiciary that is setting the innocent free.
We will pursue justice for our Clients.
We are undaunted. Our sense of law has been violated today.
And to paraphrase the words of one American President: democracy is too strong for our learned Attorney-General.
Yours faithfully,
Samuel Atta Akyea
Zoe, Akyea & Co.
SOURCE: GRAPHICONLINE
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