I Did Not Authorise Withdrawal Of AAL Legal Suit

Mr Martin Amidu - Former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice

Former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Martin B. K. Amidu, has denied authorising the withdrawal of a legal suit involving African Automobile Limited (AAL) and the state in July, 2011.

He stated that if anybody had done so he did it personally without his knowledge and approval as the Attorney-General and, therefore, described it as “unconstitutional, fraudulent, null and void as contravening Article 1(2) of the Constitution.”

Mr Amidu said any such directive for the withdrawal of the suit “could only have been intended to promote some self-serving purpose by the person or persons who took the decision in violation of Article 88 of the Constitution particularly, sub-clause (5) thereof”.

In a statement posted on the Internet with the headline: “Martin Amidu on Gallopers, Settlements and the hallowed traditions of the Office of the Attorney-General”, the former Attorney-General stated emphatically that, “no file on the case involving the Galloper II Vehicles was ever submitted to me as Attorney-General with recommendations for any decision whatsoever”.

Challenge
He, therefore, challenged the Deputy Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General during his tenure of office to produce evidence to the public that the file on the Gallopers was ever brought to his attention as the Attorney-General for any action and his instructions thereon to have warranted an agreement in July, 2011 to enter into settlement discussions on behalf of the Republic of Ghana.

“If there is no such evidence on the file, then, the Deputy Attorney-General, Hon. Barton Odro, and the Solicitor-General, Mrs. Amma Gaisie, have some explaining to do to the people of Ghana; how come the case was discontinued or held in abeyance for settlement without authority from the Attorney-General?”, he asked.

Mr Amidu said under Article 88 of the Constitution, it was only the Attorney-General who had, “the sole and personal responsibility under my oath of office for the running of the Attorney-General’s Department”.

He said the Chief of Staff had always reminded deputy ministers that they could not under the Constitution write or sign letters in their own capacity as deputy ministers but could do so upon the instructions of or the authority of the minister under Article 78 and on behalf of the minister.

According to him, that explains why the President appoints another minister to act in the absence of a substantive minister.

“No such temporary appointment took place in July, 2011. Neither the Deputy Attorney-General, Hon. Barton Odro, MP, who took liberties for claiming to hail from Cape Coast with the President of the Republic nor the Solicitor-General, Mrs. Amma Gaisie, had the constitutional authority under Article 88 to make such an important and critical decision which could cost millions of Ghana Cedis to the Republic without my expressed concurrence and in writing. I make bold to say that not even the President who appointed me as the Attorney-General could under Article 88 of the Constitution delegate my constitutional functions as the Attorney-General to any other person or authority without first relieving me of my appointment by express revocation of my warrant of appointment,” he said.

Mr Amidu said, “if the alleged discontinuance or holding of the case in abeyance was done unconstitutionally it will follow that my successor cannot rectify a void and unconstitutional act by any usurpers of the authority granted the Attorney-General under Article 88”.

Authorisation
He noted that any experienced legal practitioner assuming the office of the Attorney-General must have satisfied himself by now that any on-going settlements he inherited were properly authorised by the person with constitutional authority to do so, stressing that “the Deputy Attorney-General, Hon. Barton Odro, and the Solicitor-General, know that I always insisted that whatever I continued from my predecessor was properly authorised in accordance with the law since I had personal responsibility for whatever happened during my tenure”.

According to him, no Commission of Enquiry or Court would take the excuse that one’s predecessor breached the Constitution so one also continued to do so.

The former Attorney-General, therefore, asked the Deputy Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General to state whether or not the holding of the case in abeyance for settlement negotiations was initiated “by the Attorneys directly handling the case in the court or upon instructions from either of them”.

“If the Attorneys handling the case initiated the negotiations for settlement there must be memoranda coming up to the Solicitor-General and beyond stating the necessity for a settlement. If it was initiated from the Deputy Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General there must similarly be a memorandum or memoranda to the Attorney-General recommending the necessity for a settlement. The Deputy Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General know that this was the procedure adopted when recommendations were made to me on 11th November, 2011 to consider the proposals for withdrawal of the case of Attorney-General Vs. Alfred Agbesi Woyome from the High Court for settlement negotiations which I refused, for good legal reasons, to withdraw,” he said.

Mr Amidu said he had been a Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister for Justice for upwards of twelve and half years and knew more than anybody else the limits of the authority a Deputy Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General.

As a result, he said, he did not waste time when he assumed office as the Attorney-General in reminding the Deputy Attorney-General, Hon. Barton Odro, MP and the Solicitor-General, Mrs. Amma Gaisie, that he would not take responsibility for any actions or omissions by either of them or those working up to them unless the acts or omission were done with his (Amidu) knowledge and express authorisation.

Records
According to him, there were other written records of cases file in which he refused to endorse and forward to the Minister for Finance and Economic Planning for payment of settlements purportedly entered into by junior Attorneys without any indication on file of their authority to commit the Republic of Ghana to such debts.

“There is also evidence of several memoranda I wrote to the Deputy Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General asking for explanations for the Republic having to pay certain settlements or judgment debts which were never answered in spite of reminders.

Some of these memoranda related to other African Automobile Limited judgments in which the Court of Appeal or High Court had had to make adverse comments about the performance of the Attorneys who represented the office in Court,” he added.

Stance
Mr Amidu said both the Deputy Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General knew that his general attitude to cases pending in the courts was to allow the court to decide rather than settle them out of court, abuse the court process and fool the electorate and general public by transforming them into consent judgments granted by the court.

He said he also insisted that in the exceptional cases in which the office had to consider settlement of cases out of court, the settlement proposal had to be accompanied by a written memorandum citing relevant precedents for the conclusions reached, coming from the Attorney handling the case through his Head of Group to the Solicitor-General to the Deputy-Attorney-General and then to me, the Attorney-General for consideration and final decision.

“I reminded the Solicitor-General several times that this was the hallowed practice of the Attorney-General’s Office in settling cases for purposes of probity, accountability and transparency in discharging the burdensome and onerous duty in approving payments from the Consolidated Fund. I told the Deputy Attorney-General who was making his first stint as a Deputy Attorney-General that the practice was evolved to prevent putting temptation in the path of the Attorney-General in just assigning any figures to cases to settle at his whims. This brings the Attorney-General into unnecessary suspicion and disrepute in the exercise of his quasi judicial functions.

'Hallowed traditions'
“I had the misfortune of entering into an office where a long and hallowed tradition of settlement or legal decision making being accompanied by legal justifications from the bottom-up that enabled the Attorney-General within his busy schedule to make informed decisions had been abandoned. A number of debt settlements that had been signed by the Deputy Attorney-General and letters signed to the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning for payment had no memoranda attached to them to show the legal basis of arriving at the settlements. A number of other settlements by the Attorney-General and letters to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning also had no memoranda supporting how the settlements and figures were arrived at,” he stated.

Mr Amidu pointed out that in a number of written responses from the Solicitor-General to some of his memos, she disclaimed any knowledge about how the figures were arrived at or even her being allowed to make her views known on those matters and that that was why he wanted the right thing to be done in accordance with the hallowed traditions of the Attorney-General’s office, in which he had practiced as Deputy Attorney-General for more than a decade, stressing that “it saves one’s integrity and indemnifies one against corrupt practices.

He cited a case in which he alleged the Deputy Attorney-General, Mr Barton Odro, “had the boldness, without any direct or express authority from me since I took over as the Attorney-General to work out and arrive at a settlement of GH¢38 million plus for alleged wrongful dismissal of workers of the National Mobilisation Progamme by Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey in a pending court case that had been brought by the dismissed workers against the Attorney-General”.

The former Attorney-General said he queried the settlement and instructed that the court be allowed to determine whether or not there was wrongful dismissal.

That, according to him, was because “unless the court determined that Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey had indeed wrongfully dismissed the workers it was fool hardy for me as the Attorney-General to settle the matter on the basis of wrongful dismissal and pretend that my decision could be used to prosecute Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey for causing financial loss to the state”.

Mr Amidu said there were other cases which were settled before he went to the Attorney-General’s Office under the naïve belief that evidence of the Attorney-General’s settlement could be used as evidence of causing financial loss to the state.

Judicial system
“As a former PNDC operative, my decision in the National Mobilisation Programme settlement case, a temptation put in my path, was difficult for me as a politician. But I was acting not as Minister of State, a politician, but as the Attorney-General of the Republic, a quasi judicial officer, who has faith in the judicial system to determine the issues presented to the court by the parties,” he said.

He said he had deliberately stayed away from the controversy whether or not there was a binding and subsisting contract between African Automobile Limited and the Government of Ghana at the time of the performance of the contract because of his faith in the Constitution and its Courts.

According to him, his attitude towards the presumptuousness of any Attorney-General who wanted to court suspicion for himself in the settlement of such pending cases were well known to have decided those with access to the case files not to have allowed me to see the file on the Gallopers while he was the Attorney-General, stressing that “my considered view is that it is always better for an Attorney-General to have faith in and prefer a court’s interpretation of facts to determine whether or not there is a contract between litigants as a matter of law than to arrogate to himself that judicial function and open himself up to suspicions and unwarranted insinuations of motives inconsistent with his quasi judicial office.”

Mr Amidu referred to a Civil Appeal J4/23/2012, African Automobile Limited vs. The Attorney-General, 6th June 2012, (Supreme Court, Unreported) in which the Supreme Court dismissed African Automobile Limited’s appeal for the enforcement of an agreement to be paid compound interest on the grounds that a referee appointed by the High Court had found that two exhibits constituted a contract between the parties.

He made it clear that an Attorney-General must not have a personal or political bias in any case in the exercise of his professional responsibilities under Article 88 of the Constitution.

“An Attorney-General, with years of legal practice to his credit, knows he will ultimately take personal and professional responsibility for saddling the Republic with any debt settlement. He would consequently not act upon the basis of the opinions of persons who may have self-serving interests in any out of court settlement or court settlement of cases however learned or powerful they may claim to be in the law or in the Government overtly or covertly. Caution, they say is the better part of valour. The Supreme Courts can never, in making authoritative decisions on the law, cause financial loss to the state,” he concluded.