The High Court in Accra has dismissed a motion filed by former presidential staffer and Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Mr Charles Cromwell Bissue, seeking to stop his criminal trial by the Office of the Special Prosecutor.
It is his case that the charges filed against him by the OSP were defective and cannot stand.
Mr Bissue, Raphael Mensah and Dr Naa Dedei Tagoe are facing nine counts involving alleged corruption and abuse of public office.
Mr Bissue has challenged the prosecution on three grounds: that an earlier case remains pending, that the police had cleared him, and that the OSP lacks authority to investigate cases not referred to it by the police.
On the first ground, the court requested the original records of the earlier proceedings.
The records, dated July 3, 2025, indicated that the case had been withdrawn and struck out.
His counsel, Mr Augustine Obour, disputed the records, saying he could not remember being in court that day or seeing one of the accused.
The judge said a failure to remember the proceedings was not sufficient reason to reject official court records.
The court held that the grounds on which the applicant built his arguments were frivolous and dismissed them.
In the first trial, which started in July 2019, Thomas Andy Owusu, one of the accused, pleaded guilty and was convicted.
But Mr Bissue pleaded not guilty.
In the course of the trial, the OSP withdrew the charges and filed fresh charges against Mr Bissue.
His lawyers contend that the new charges were incurably flawed and incompetent.
The Criminal Division of the High Court admitted the accused to bail in the sum of GH¢200,000 each, with two sureties, one of whom must be justified.
BY MALIK SULLEMANA
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