Fraud Claims against Court of Appeal Judge by French businesswoman False- Manasseh Azure
Investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni has dismissed fraud reports circulating on tabloids involving a France-based businesswoman and a Court of Appeal judge.
The fraud report story is said to be sourced from the Facebook page of Mensah Thompson of ASEPA, which has photos of a police statement.
Per reports, the complainant, Bire Marie-Dominique, is accusing Justice Ekow Baiden of swindling her out of a sum US$190,000.
According to Mr Azure Awun,i he was prompted to investigate the matter over a month ago after being contacted by certain individuals.
“I was extremely livid when the issue was first narrated to me and I wondered how a judge could do that.
“After carefully perusing the documents, however, I concluded that what I had been told and the documents I had were not enough to do the story. People have worked hard for their reputation and unless I have a good reason to do so, I will not publish their names with the allegations, a reason I’ve still been engaging the complainant’s sources,” the investigative journalist noted in a Facebook post on Saturday, August 5.
Mr Azure Awuni noted that he reached out to the “brother” of the complainant whose submissions to him indicates no case of fraud as alleged.
“In a chronology of events sent to me by the supposed brother of the buyer (a France-based Senegalese woman), this is what she wrote:
“April/May 2021: Upon my arrival in Accra to sign the Lease Agreement, the seller changes the terms (purchase price, sub-lease agreement duration), and refuses to sign the contracts. I raise the issue via email with my lawyer, who insists on engaging with various parties to finalize the deal (see emails).’” he stated.
According to the investigative journalist, in the police extract that Mensah Thompson posted, the woman claims the judge increased the price of the building from $190,000 to $250,000 and refused to sign the lease agreement. However, her petition to the Office of the Special Prosecutor “indicates that she opted out of the transaction because there was a disagreement in the number of years of the unexpired lease since she is a foreigner and could not get beyond 50 years of the unexpired lease”.
Further arguing out his point, he noted that in an April 2022 letter, the lawyer of the woman, Roberts Ekor Dassah, stated that her client “resiled the sale agreement” due to some “irreconcilable reasons” and per findings, the word “resile” means abandon a position or a course of action”.
In his research, Mr Azure found out that Bire Marie-Dominique expressed interest in a property that belonged to the judge and his wife; got her lawyer to do due diligence on the property and when she was satisfied with the documents, paid the money in two installments in March 2021 and took possession of the keys to the property, pending the signing of the lease agreement.
He, therefore, concluded that “there is nothing to show that it was the judge who refused to sign the agreement. I have tried to ask questions and get clarity on the contradictions of the woman making the allegations, but I’m yet to be satisfied.”
“There is also no evidence that the judge had increased the price of the property. This does not come up in any of the extensive exchanges between the parties involved or the lawyers acting on either side of the transaction.
“In any case, I found it strange that a seller who handed over the keys of the property to the buyer and allowed the buyer to take possession would not want to sign the agreement after taking his payment.
“It is also strange that the buyer would still want to proceed with the transaction after realising that the price had been increased from 190,000 to 250,000 dollars, and that it was the seller’s refusal to sign that stopped the deal,” he added.
Further findings of Mr Manasseh Azure Awuni are as follows:
DEFAMATION SUIT
Before the property was resold, the woman wrote to a number of institutions such as the police, EOCO, the Office of the President and the Chief Justice, accusing the judge of fraud and theft.
She even wrote to the judge’s bank and alleged that the judge had received fraudulent payment into his account, a petition which resulted in a temporary blocking of the judge’s bank account. I have seen evidence of all that.
In the chronology of events written by the buyer/woman, the judge threatened her with a defamation suit in August 2021 but she insisted she would continue to involve state authorities until she got a refund of the money.
She says in December 2021, the judge asked to repossess or take over his property and sell it to someone else since she was no longer interested in buying it.
In February 2022, the judge sued her for defamation.
In May 2022, the buyer, through her power of attorney, wrote to the institutions to retract and apologise for the defamatory statements against the judge.
In April 2022, (a year since the woman had taken possession of the property) the judge sold the property to a medical doctor for 190,000 dollars. (Note that it was still the same price at which it was sold to the woman, not the 250,000 dollars she claims the judge had increased it to).
In April 2022, lawyers for the buyer wrote to the seller/the judge to refund the money to their clients since the property had now been sold to a different buyer after the woman opted out of the deal a year ago.
Sources close to the judge claim the defamation case was nearing determination and the judge held on with the payment so that should he win–which was likely because by the nature of the apologies and retraction, the woman had admitted defaming the judge–it could be used to offset the damages he was seeking.
The judge won the defamation case to the tune of about 2 million cedis.
(This is part of the case concerning the withholding of the payment pending the outcome of the trial, I’m told, is being contested by the woman).
I have narrated what I know of the case and my hesitation in carrying out this story because of the many accusations of compromise levelled against persons who handled the case at one point or the other.
The initial lawyer of the woman, the police who started the investigation, the woman’s power of attorney etc, have all been accused of one compromise or the other.
Should anybody claim that this case was brought to my attention, but I failed to pursue it, the reason is that as of this dawn, before Ghanaweb broke the story, those giving me information on behalf of the complainant were still yet to answer critical questions about their own allegations against the judge and a screenshot of the WhatsApp shows
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