In the high-stakes arena of Ghanaian public life, there is a dangerous tendency to mistake the standard application of the law for an act of executive grace.
The narrative currently being shared by one Akaneweo Kabiru Abdul on Facebook suggests that the non-prosecution of Ibrahim Mahama in 2017 was a deliberate display of “restraint” by the previous administration, a benevolent choice to forgo a criminal trial in the interest of national peace.
This is a seductive argument, but it is one built upon a foundation of legal sand. To suggest that a president “chose” not to imprison a citizen over a commercial tax dispute is to indicate that the president sits above the law, dispensing mercy like a medieval monarch rather than a constitutional head of state. The core of the Ibrahim Mahama matter was never a question of criminal intent; it was a matter of corporate administration.
When MBG Limited and Holman Brothers entered into an arrangement with the Ghana Revenue Authority, they did so as separate legal entities, distinct and distant from the personal identity of their directors.
This is the bedrock of our commercial civilisation: the Principle of Separate Legal Personality. A company is its own person. It possesses its own liabilities, and its failures are not the automatic crimes of its shareholders. When those post-dated cheques were returned, it was a failure of corporate liquidity in the pursuit of industrial expansion, not a manifestation of individual malice.
To understand why the case did not result in a trial, one must answer the fundamental question of capacity. Ibrahim Mahama did not sign those cheques as an individual seeking to defraud the state. He signed as an agent of a corporate body engaged in the heavy lifting of national development.
Under the entity principle, liability is anchored to the company from the moment of its birth. Unless one can prove that the corporate veil was used as a mere cloak for personal fraud, the law forbids the state from reaching across that divide to snatch the liberty of the individual.
The “restraint” described was therefore not a political choice but a legal necessity. To have pursued a criminal conviction where no personal “mens rea” or criminal mind existed would not have been firm leadership; it would have been a catastrophic abuse of the judicial process.
The attempt to juxtapose this with the current scrutiny of Chairman Wontumi and the Exim Bank reveals a profound moral and legal disconnect. We are told that the current Attorney-General is being “cruel,” yet we must look at the nature of the allegations.
There is a gargantuan gulf between a businessman settling a genuine tax debt for imported machinery and an individual accused of using forged documents to draw millions from a state bank for projects that exist only on paper. One is a matter of administrative settlement where the state was made whole; the other is a matter of alleged systemic theft from the public purse.
When the state moves against forgery and the misappropriation of public funds, it is not “theatrics.” It is the solemn discharge of a constitutional duty to protect the wealth of the people. The irony is indeed striking, but it does not favour the defenders of the status quo.
It is an irony that seeks to cloak potential criminality in the language of “business interests” while dismissing the recovery of state funds as “intimidation.” We cannot have a country where the law is a spider’s web that catches the small but lets the powerful break through under the guise of “institutional sobriety.”
Justice is not found in the quiet corners of backroom settlements; it is found in the open, under the searing heat of public accountability. If the previous administration “restrained” itself in the Mahama case, it was because the law gave it no ground to stand on.
If the current administration is vocal regarding Wontumi, it is because the evidence of financial loss to the state is too loud to ignore. Ultimately, we must decide if we want a nation governed by the whims of “restrained” leaders or a nation governed by the rigour of the law.
Liberty is not a gift from the Jubilee House; it is a right protected by the proper application of legal principles. To applaud the lack of prosecution in the Mahama case as “kindness” is to insult the very legal framework that found his companies innocent of criminal intent.
Conversely, to decry the pursuit of Wontumi as “cruelty” is to suggest that some citizens are too politically significant to be questioned. History will not judge us by the “mercy” we showed to the powerful, but by the courage we had to ensure that every cedi belonging to the Ghanaian people was accounted for.
By Raymond Ablorh
*Author: Raymond Ablorh is a reputable Policy, Research, & Strategic Communication Consultant with about two decades of extensive local and global professional experience. Email: raymondablorh25@gmail.com; Cell #: 0244040803*
