A single set of board minutes from March 13, 2019, has become the most consequential document in Ghana’s Skytrain corruption trial, and on Wednesday an Accra High Court ordered the prosecution’s own witness to go and find them.
The order, granted by Justice Audrey Kocuvie-Tay, came after defence counsel for former Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) Chief Executive Officer Solomon Asamoah pointed out a glaring gap in the prosecution’s documentary record. Although a subsequent board minute makes explicit reference to corrections from an earlier minute of March 13, 2019, that earlier document was not among the materials disclosed by the prosecution. The witness, former GIIF Board Secretary Kofi Boakye, had already testified that he submitted minutes for every board meeting during his tenure and believed he might still be able to locate the March 13 document in his email archive. The court took him at his word and ordered him to produce it.
Deputy Attorney General Dr. Justice Srem-Sai fought the order, describing the request as a fishing expedition designed to unearth materials that might accidentally assist the defence. He argued that the accused persons themselves would have access to these minutes and could introduce them during their own defence if necessary. Defence counsel Victoria Barth rejected that framing flatly, noting that the case investigators had specifically focused their inquiry on GIIF board minutes between September 2018 and December 2020, a window that squarely includes March 2019. “The prosecutor’s duty is to seek the justice of the case and not pursue a conviction at all costs,” she told the court.
The missing minutes matter because the entire prosecution rests on a single claim: that the GIIF board never approved the US$2 million investment in the Accra Skytrain light rail project. Boakye, testifying as the second prosecution witness, told the court that the investment committee supported the Skytrain project but never formally recommended it to the board for approval, and concluded his evidence-in-chief by saying the project was never approved at either committee or board level throughout his tenure.
Cross-examination put that position under sustained pressure. Defence lawyers confronted Boakye with board minutes from October 2018, drafted by Boakye himself, which recorded the Skytrain project as proceeding “following approval by the board.” Despite being the author of those minutes, Boakye maintained that the language did not constitute a record of approval. The defence also presented an email circulated to all board members, including Boakye, in which Asamoah described the project as board-approved. None of the recipients replied to contest the description. When asked about his silence, Boakye answered: “There was no point in arguing out a fact on an email trail. The decision of the board is found in the board minutes.” The defence’s point was that the board minutes say exactly what Asamoah has been arguing all along.
Boakye’s testimony has also directly contradicted that of the first prosecution witness, Yaw Odame-Darkwa, who claimed the Skytrain concept was introduced at only one board meeting. Boakye acknowledged the project was raised at several board meetings.
Asamoah and former GIIF Board Chairman Prof. Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi face charges of wilfully causing financial loss to the state, intentional dissipation of public funds, and conspiracy to commit crime. No allegation of personal financial gain or diversion of funds has been made against either accused, and neither the Ministry of Railways Development nor the government-selected project sponsors have been charged.
The case has been adjourned to Thursday, February 19, for the continuation of cross-examination, with the question of the March 2019 minutes still unresolved.
