LEGAL PRACTITIONER and National Democratic Congress (NDC) communicator, Edudzi Kudzo Tamakloe, has taken a sharp jab at fellow lawyer and former Minister, Samuel Atta Akyea, over his comments defending an accused former state official in an ongoing high-profile national security-related trial.
In a strongly worded statement, Mr. Edudzi Tamakloe questioned the legal reasoning behind Atta Akyea’s defence, especially his attempt to anchor part of the argument on the Security and Intelligence Agencies Act, 2020.
According to Edudzi Tamakloe, the offences listed in the charge sheet occurred in January and March 2020, while the said Act was only assented to in October 2020.
“How are you relying on this Act to evaluate conduct that happened before it existed?” he quizzed, dismissing the basis of the defence as legally flawed.
Edudzi Tamakloe went further to caution against misleading legal strategies, reminding fellow lawyers of their ethical duty to offer sound advice to clients. “You don’t make life difficult for the client. Criminal defence is a special skill,” he admonished.
He outlined what he termed the “simple case” of the prosecution; that the accused, while serving as Director of a state agency in charge of non-combat national security operations, signed a contract with an Israeli company to supply security equipment.
Around the same time, he is said to have incorporated a private company with a similar name to the state agency and then diverted public funds into it.
According to Tamakloe, this act of appropriation is at the heart of the charge of stealing, as the funds were allegedly moved dishonestly.
He also rejected attempts to justify the transactions with claims of later payments made to Members of Parliament in 2024, describing those payments as irrelevant to the dishonest appropriation that allegedly occurred four years earlier. “That’s simply an afterthought,” he opined.
In a final cutting remark, Edudzi Kudzo Tamakloe suggested that instead of mounting weak legal defences, the accused’s lawyers should be focused on negotiating a lighter sentence. “At this rate, your lawyers should be advising you on how to do less than 25 years,” he concluded.
Source: Nationaltymes.com
