The legal counsel for Charles Bissue, the former Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on illegal mining, has said his client will not be turning himself in despite the Office of the Special Prosecutor securing an order from the court for his arrest.
The latest order was secured after Charles Bissue failed to honour an invitation by the Special Prosecutor in May 2023.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor on May 3, 2023, wrote to Bissue informing him he was a necessary person for the investigation into the activities of the IMCIM.
Charles Bissue, however, asked the court to stop OSP from investigating him again
He was asked to appear at the offices of the investigative body on May 22.
Lawyers for Bissue then wrote to the OSP requesting a copy of the petition forming the basis of this invitation and asking that the said meeting be rescheduled to May 25 due to « a domestic emergency ».
Lawyers for Bissue said the OSP refused to accept the proposed date of 25th May 2023 and insisted on the May 22 date.
This meeting did not happen causing the OSP to proceed to court to secure an arrest warrant.
The lawyer for Charles Bissue, Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah speaking on Accra-based Joy FM indicated that this is not because his client is on the run but because the arrest warrant was improperly secured.
He said if the court was privy to all the information including complaints of human rights abuse of Mr. Bissue by the Special Prosecutor, the court order for his client’s arrest would not have been given.
Awuah said the arrest warrant would have been secured ex parte, which is without notice to Charles Bissue. So the court would have acted based solely on information the Special Prosecutor gave to it. The court made that order without being fed with the global evidence in this matter and granted the arrest order without properly exercising its discretion not through its fault.
He added that if the court was privy to certain facts including but not limited to pending suits and motions for interlocutory injunctions, it would not have granted or made an order for that arrest.
The legal practitioner explained that it is seemingly suspicious that the Special Prosecutor is in a hurry when there are about three pending suits against him.
Charles Bissue was fingered in an exposé by Investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas and his Tiger Eye Pi team when he was caught taking bribes to facilitate illegal mining popularly known as galamsey.
Bissue in the video emerged as a facilitator for a company seeking to circumvent laid down processes to be given clearance for its mining operations.
He is seen receiving wads of cash to facilitate the speedy ‘clearance’ of a mining company so that it can begin mining as soon as possible and is heard in the video instructing his subordinates over the phone to « fast track » the processing of the company’s documents.
Pulse
