Richard Jakpa, the third accused in the ambulance trial, has revealed that he met with Attorney General Godfred Dame on four separate occasions. This revelation came after Justice Afia Serwah Asare-Botwe admitted an audio recording of a conversation between Jakpa and Dame as evidence.
This allowed Ato Forson’s lawyers to extensively question Jakpa about his claims that the Attorney General engaged him at odd hours to incriminate Forson. When asked how many times he had met with Dame, Jakpa replied that they had met four times, all at the house of his cousin, Supreme Court Judge Justice Yonny Kulendi. These meetings occurred between 9:30 PM and 11:30 PM.
Jakpa detailed that two of these meetings took place in 2022, in February and July. Under cross-examination, he revealed that the first meeting, on February 16, 2020, was at his request. He wanted to meet with the Attorney General to explain his situation and demonstrate that the charges against him were unfounded. During this first meeting, Dame assured Jakpa that he would be discharged when the ruling on the submission of no case was made.
However, Jakpa noted that the second meeting in July 2022 was initiated by a call to meet Dame at Justice Kulendi’s house. Jakpa decided to cooperate with the Attorney General based on the earlier assurances of his discharge from the case.
At the second meeting, Jakpa claimed that Dame asked him to provide documents he had previously submitted to the Economic and Organized Crime Office, which he did. These documents included an addendum to the main contract for the supply of ambulances and a letter from former Health Minister Alex Segbefia nominating government officials to travel to Dubai to discuss the contract with Big Sea. Jakpa hoped that Dame would read these documents and recognize his innocence.
Jakpa also disclosed a third meeting in March 2024, days before he opened his defense, and another meeting before the ruling on the submission of no case in 2023.
