MANHYIA SOUTH MP CHARGED OVER A GH¢9.85 MILLION SIC LIFE CUT AS PROSECUTORS POINT TO A GH¢1 MILLION CHEQUE

The Attorney General has filed three criminal charges against Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, the Member of Parliament for Manhyia South, over a 2024 settlement that prosecutors say cost a state owned lender GH¢9.85 million. He has pleaded not guilty. Nothing in the charge sheet has been proved.

The charges were filed on 3 October 2026 at the High Court, Specialised Jurisdiction Division, in Accra. They are conspiracy to commit a crime, namely intentional dissipation of public funds, contrary to Section 1(1) of the Public Property Protection Decree, 1977 (SMCD 140) and Section 23(1) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29). The second count is intentionally causing financial loss to a public body, contrary to Section 179A(2) of Act 29. The third is money laundering, contrary to Section 1(2)(a) of the Anti Money Laundering Act, 2020 (Act 1044).

The accused is described on the sheet as a 44 year old lawyer and a sitting MP, a native of Achiase in the Ashanti Region, and senior partner of Sarkodie Baffour Awuah and Partners. The company at the centre of the case, SIC Life Savings and Loans Company Limited, is described by the state as owned entirely by the state.

The brief facts, published in full by Starr FM, start in May 2020. SIC Life engaged the firm to sue Equity Savings and Loans Limited for a debt of GH¢6,301,018.76. Baffour Awuah took personal conduct. The fee was 15 percent of the principal claimed, plus 1 percent for expenses. Fifteen percent of that principal is GH¢945,152.81. In the same month SIC Life paid GH¢284,000 as part payment.

On 18 July 2022 the High Court, Commercial Division, Accra, entered summary judgment for SIC Life against Equity in suit number CM/RPC/0795/2020 for GH¢10,862,277.94. In execution, the firm caused a 31.93 acre parcel at Adamorobe, near KAS Valley Estate, Oyibi, in the Greater Accra Region, to be attached on 20 December 2023. The court appointed an auctioneer to sell it at a reserve of GH¢25 million. The state says no encumbrance was recorded when execution began.

A revised judgment dated 28 May 2024 raised the debt to GH¢14,850,776.14, including interest and costs. On the prosecution’s reading, SIC Life then held a judgment of nearly GH¢15 million, secured by attached land with a GH¢25 million reserve, and stood to recover the whole sum if the auction ran.

Equity did not wait. On 14 March 2024, while the land was under attachment, Equity purportedly sold it to Eco Swiss Investment Limited for GH¢21,760,000. Investigators say Eco Swiss had not been incorporated, and therefore did not exist, when it purportedly acquired the property. The state says Baffour Awuah was instrumental in arranging the transaction. By July 2024 Eco Swiss had paid Equity only GH¢5 million of the price. That month Eco Swiss filed a notice of claim challenging the attachment. The auction stalled.

The brief facts say the accused knew the defects in the Eco Swiss claim, looked the other way, and actively encouraged settlement. On 18 July 2024 SIC Life, Equity and Eco Swiss signed terms of settlement. SIC Life agreed to accept GH¢5 million from Eco Swiss in full and final settlement of the GH¢14,850,776.14 judgment. The gap between those two figures is the GH¢9,850,000 named in counts one and two.

The terms did not stop at the haircut. They required Eco Swiss to pay the lawyer and his firm 15 percent, not of the reduced GH¢5 million, but of the original judgment debt, as legal fees. MyJoyOnline, reporting the charge sheet, put that fee at GH¢2.2 million. The Starr FM text of the brief facts is internally inconsistent on the same point. One sentence says the fee was GH¢2.2 million. The next parenthesis says GH¢4.4 million. Fifteen percent of GH¢14.85 million is about GH¢2.23 million, which matches the GH¢2.2 million figure used by MyJoyOnline and does not match GH¢4.4 million. Eco Swiss was also to pay GH¢1 million in auctioneer’s fees. Of the GH¢8.2 million Eco Swiss undertook to pay under the terms, the state says the judgment creditor was to receive barely three fifths.

The managing director of SIC Life signed the terms. The state says she did so in conspiracy with the accused. Investigations found no record of prior approval by the board or the shareholders, no later ratification, and no approval by the Ministry of Finance, the oversight ministry. A separate report by Ghana News Online named the signatory as Amma Frimpomaa Dwumah and said EOCO had questioned her authority. That name is not in the charge particulars published by Starr FM, which refer only to the managing director.

The money laundering count is the cheque. The brief facts say that immediately after receiving the purported fees, Baffour Awuah, on 11 November 2024, wrote a cheque for GH¢1 million to the person who was then managing director and who had signed the consent terms. Prosecutors say that sum is almost half the purported fee, that he has not told investigators what it was for, and that he transferred it knowing it was acquired through crime, to help the recipient evade the legal consequences. Ghana News Online reported that EOCO placed the transfer after Dwumah had left SIC, and also said Equity had paid the firm GH¢611,720.47. Those details are not in the published brief facts. The investigation, the state says, is still ongoing.

He is not in custody. GBC reported that an Accra High Court granted him GH¢10 million bail with two sureties after he pleaded not guilty to all three counts. Deputy Attorney General Dr Justice Srem Sai, leading the prosecution, did not oppose bail, but asked for conditions that would keep him available to the court and to investigators. Srem Sai told the court that EOCO had made several attempts to secure his attendance. EOCO obtained a High Court warrant on 30 September for his arrest and for the search and seizure of documents. He reported himself on 1 October 2026 with his lawyers, was detained and questioned, and spent a night in custody. His lawyers have said the transactions arose from legal work by his former firm. He has also said, outside the charge sheet, that the settlement was reached on his client’s instructions.

Speaker Alban Bagbin has called for restraint and fairness in the use of coercive powers, MyJoyOnline reported, after Parliament raised concern about the detention. That is a procedural argument. It does not answer the settlement.

The political noise around the arrest is already loud, and it is not evidence. Mustapha Gbande said he told EOCO to arrest the MP. John Boadu, in a remark widely circulated, said Baffour Awuah would not die in EOCO detention and that if he did, that would be acceptable to his side. Lawyer Victoria Bright argued that the 48 hour detention rule is not an automatic entitlement for EOCO. Martin Kpebu questioned whether the reasons for the warrant were justified, and later explained when EOCO can arrest after a warrant. None of those comments is a finding on the cheque or the settlement.

What a court will have to decide is narrower than the political fight. A lawyer may settle a case on a client’s instructions. A managing director may have authority to sign, or may not. A fee of 15 percent of a judgment can be a contractual term, or it can be a term inserted without authority. A payment from a lawyer to a former client officer can be a refund, a loan, a cost, or, if the state proves knowledge and purpose, laundering. The prosecution’s case is that the land was attached, the reserve was GH¢25 million, the buyer did not exist when the sale was purportedly made, the auction was then stalled, the judgment was cut by GH¢9.85 million without board or ministry approval, the fee was calculated on the uncut debt, and almost half of that fee moved by cheque to the official who signed the cut. The defence case, so far, is that this was legal work, done on instructions, and that he is not guilty.

A reserve price is not a sale price. Ghana News Online made that point before the charges were filed. A GH¢25 million reserve does not prove SIC Life would have received GH¢25 million at auction. A legal fee is not, by itself, an offence. A payment to a former managing director is not, without more, money laundering. The state has to prove agreement, intention, and knowledge. Baffour Awuah is presumed innocent unless the High Court finds otherwise.

SIC Life is a public body in the state’s description, wholly state owned, and the loss count is built on that status. If the court accepts that a consent judgment signed by a managing director, without board or Finance Ministry approval, intentionally dissipated GH¢9.85 million, the case becomes a test of how far a lawyer can go in a settlement for a state lender. If the court accepts that the cheque of 11 November 2024 was a transfer of criminal property to help the recipient, the laundering count stands on its own even if the fee argument is fought separately. If the defence shows instructions, authority and a legitimate purpose for the cheque, the three counts fall together.

The next hearings will test documents more than speeches. The terms of 18 July 2024, the incorporation date of Eco Swiss, the board minutes that the state says do not exist, the Finance Ministry file, and the cheque of 11 November 2024 are the record. Until they are tested, the GH¢9.85 million is an allegation, and the MP is on bail.