The High Court in Accra, presided over by Justice Audrey Kocuvie-Tay, has admitted email correspondences and accompanying attachments into evidence, many of which reference the Accra Sky Train project.
These documents identify the Sky Train project as one of the investments listed under the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF).
Contradictory claims and evidence
Among the admitted documents is an email thread from September 2020, which explicitly lists the Sky Train as a GIIF project affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This evidence sharply contradicts the statement by the prosecution’s first witness, Yaw Odame-Darkwa, who previously asserted that the Sky Train project was referenced only once in a board meeting and that the minutes did not accurately reflect the board’s discussions or decisions about the project.
Charges against former GIIF officials
Solomon Asamoah, former Chief Executive Officer of GIIF, and Prof. Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi, former Board Chairman, are both facing charges relating to an alleged unauthorised $2 million investment in the Accra Sky Train project. The prosecution claims this resulted in financial loss to the state.
Cross-examination and relevance of email evidence
During cross-examination, Victoria Barth, counsel for Solomon Asamoah, sought to establish that the Sky Train project had been discussed multiple times, thereby challenging the credibility of the prosecution’s witness.
Mrs. Barth introduced an email from the Secretary to the GIIF board, sent in 2020, which included fifteen attachments, some of which mentioned the Sky Train project.
Objection and arguments over admissibility
Deputy Attorney General, Dr. Justice Srem-Sai, objected to the admission of the emails, questioning their relevance under sections 51 and 52 of the Evidence Act.
He argued that the trial’s core issues concern whether there was board approval for the investment and whether parliamentary approval for the international financial transaction was obtained. According to Dr. Srem-Sai, none of the documents offered for evidence addressed these points.
Defence response and Court’s decision
Mrs. Barth contested the objection, stating that the emails and their attachments were received by the witness and the full Board in September 2020 and included for example a Risk Report which specifically referenced the Sky Train project as an “existing project” in GIIF’s portfolio.
She argued that this evidence is relevant to determining whether the project was genuinely existing and whether it was approved by the GIIF board.
Furthermore, Mrs. Barth highlighted that the witness, in his role as Chairman of the Audit Committee, had himself presented a report circulated via email to the full Board which discussed the impact of COVID-19 on GIIF’s investments, again referring to the Sky Train project as an existing approved project, contradicting the assertion that the Sky Train project was not approved by the board. She maintained that the email correspondence are crucially important and corroborate the minutes and test the witness’s recollection and credibility.
After considering arguments from both sides, the court overruled the Deputy AG’s objection, and the email correspondence was introduced to the record as evidence.
Background
In 2019, the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) invested US$2 million for a 10% stake in Africa Investor Skytrain Consortium Holdings (“Ai Skytrain”), the company developing Accra’s Skytrain light railway project.
The Africa Investor Group (the “Sponsors”) was selected and granted the rights to develop the project by the Government of Ghana (“GoG”) through the Ministry of Railways Development (“MORD”).
At the time, the Chairman of GIIF was Professor Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi, and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) was Mr Solomon Asamoah. The Chairman had previously been a member of the GoG. Mr. Asamoah was an international development banker who had been headhunted for the position by a UK recruitment agency.
Following a change of government in Ghana in December 2024, the GoG, through the Office of the Attorney General, now alleges that this action was taken without Board approval, resulting in a willful financial loss to the state, as there is as yet “no railway built”.
It should be noted that the charges do not allege personal gain or diversion of funds, and the state has not charged anyone from MORD or the GoG-selected sponsors; only the GIIF Chairman and CEO have been charged.
The state witnesses who initially faced charges of causing financial loss to the state dropped those charges after stating that they did not approve the project, casting significant doubt on the reliability of their statements.
The prosecution’s case is built almost entirely on these statements to show that a legitimate transaction was “unauthorized”, without which there would be no case to answer.
“The prosecution’s case appears to be politically motivated, intended to fulfill a campaign promise to prosecute members of the previous government. It is unsupported by the facts, relying on demonstrably false witness statements,” a lawyer familiar with the case stated on condition of anonymity.
