Controversial private legal practitioner, Dr Maurice Ampaw has openly confessed to accepting GH?1500 bribe from a client to induce a judge to give a favorable verdict.
He made the confessions on UTV last week while calling on Chief Justice, Georgina Theodora Wood to resign in the midst of damning investigative piece by, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, which has established the complicity of some 34 Judges in an explosive corruption scandal.
Lawyer Maurice Ampaw remarked that the office of the Chief Justice has failed in dealing with corruption in the judiciary and she must bear the ultimate responsibility by stepping down.
?In advanced countries, when there is so much scandal in your institution, what you do is to honorably resign; hence the Chief Justice must do the honorable thing and resign. The judges are under her and she therefore takes responsibilities for their actions and inactions, so she must take blame for this as well,? he said.
Whiles admitting that there is corruption in the judicial service, Dr Maurice Ampaw added, it is not all judges or legal practitioners that are corrupt.
“Most judges and lawyers are fully in support of Anas’ work, and I think he’s been smart in the way and manner he approached this particular story.
I am happy now it is no more a perception but there is visual evidence to prove the corruption in our judicial service. All is not lost, there is still hope in our judicial service,” he told ATV.
Adding: “I will be 15 years this year since I was called to the bar as a lawyer, and I have known of this ‘justice for sale’ trade in all my years as a legal practitioner but it was so difficult fighting it because one is afraid the senior lawyers and judges who were then engaged in this corrupt trade will gang up on you and probably strip you off your license.?
An investigative report by the award winning investigative journalist captured 34 judges on tape in discussion with suspects or assigns of suspects on how to compromise the cases before their respective courts.
Some of the culprits have also been linked to sex scandals in the three-hour edited video emanating from a two-year investigation into corrupt practices in the Judicial Service.
Meanwhile, 22 judges who were suspended by the Judicial Council at the instance of the Chief Justice for their involvement in various acts of bribery and corruption, captured by Anas Aremeyaw Anas have headed to court to place an injunction on the showing of the video to the public.
The 22, made up of District Magistrate and Circuit court judges, want the High Court to place an injunction on the public showing of the video which has been described by many as ‘chilling’ and ‘unbelievable’.
A 5 member panel put together by the Chief Justice and headed by a Supreme Court judge to look into the matter, started its sitting on Thursday September 10, 2015. The video was shown to the accused judges after which, they were given the opportunity to respond.
They have already been asked to submit written responses about the accusation leveled against them and some have consulted their lawyers to help them write the appropriate response.
However, Lawyer Ampaw noted that Chief Justice?s decision to suspend the indicted judges was not enough, insisting that the Madam Theodora Wood herself must also resign.
Meanwhile, founder of Mountcrest University College and former Director of the Ghana School of Law, Kweku Ansah Asare, has also added his voice to calls on the CJ to resign.
According to him, the CJ must bear the brunt of all the allegations leveled against the judiciary, adding ?If this thing had happened in Britain or America or Germany, the head of the judiciary would have tendered in his or her resignation. It is a matter of principle?the buck must stop on her desk.?
Source : Al-Hajj
