Assin North MP slapped with five charges for criminal offences

The embattled Member of Parliament for Assin North, James Gyekye Quayson, has been hauled before an Accra High Court by the Attorney General for criminal offences of deceit, forgery and others for misleading a public officer.

The Attorney General dragged the MP to court for deceiving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by making a false statement that he did not have a dual citizenship, in order to acquire a Ghanaian passport.

Mr Quayson has also been charged with perjury, for making a false statement at Assin Fosu that he does not owe allegiance to any country other than Ghana, a statement he did not have a reason to believe to be true at the time of making it.

The MP is also being pursued for making a false declaration for office when he knowingly said he did not owe allegiance to any country other than Ghana for the purpose of obtaining a public office as a Member of Parliament, a statement he knew to be material for obtaining that office.

He has been charged with five criminal offences, and was expected to appear before an Accra High Court yesterday to plead to the charges. Efforts by the police to serve him with the charge sheet had, however, proved futile.

The court was informed that counsel for the accused was called on phone about the charges, and a message was sent to the MP himself, but the police were unable to serve him.

The court had, therefore, ordered that the charge sheet be served on him. The case has been adjourned to February 9, 2022.

Facts sheet

The brief facts of this case are that the accused person, James Gyakye Quayson, is the Member of Parliament for Assin North Constituency. The complainant, Richard Takyi-Mensah, is a teacher and a resident of Yamoransa in the Central Region of Ghana.

On July 26, 2019, the accused person signed an application form for a Republic of Ghana passport. In the application form, he indicated that he was a Ghanaian and did not have dual citizenship.

The accused at the time held Canadian citizenship, issued on October 30, 2016, but failed to declare the same on the application form. The passport application of the accused person was vetted on July 29, 2019.

Based on this alleged false information, together with the other information provided by the accused person on the passport application form, he was issued with a Ghanaian passport, number G2538667, on August 2, 2019.

Again, before the 2020 general elections of Ghana was conducted on December 7, 2020, and nominations were opened between October 5 and October 9 2020, the accused person picked up nomination forms to contest for the position of Member of Parliament for Assin North Constituency.

The accused person, at the time was a Ghanaian and a Canadian citizen, making him a dual citizenship holder. Therefore, he was disqualified under Article 94(2)(a) of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana to be a Member of Parliament.

In part IV of the nomination forms of the Electoral Commission of Ghana, the accused person used a statutory declaration which he had sworn to on October 6, 2020 before the District Court Registrar at Assin Fosu, stating that he did not owe allegiance to any country other than Ghana.

The accused person further went ahead to file his nomination forms on October 8, 2020 with the false information in the statutory declaration. Based on this false information, together with other information provided by the accused person in the nomination forms, his nomination was accepted by the Electoral Commission.

He contested for the position and subsequently won the seat. The accused person was issued a Certificate of Renunciation of his Canadian citizenship, dated November 26, 2020, about 48 days after he had made the false statutory declaration and filed his nomination forms.

On January 14, 2021, the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department received a petition, dated January 11 2021, from the complainant in which the complainant reported these actions of the accused, leading to investigations against him.

In his cautioned statement to the police, the accused person claimed that at the material time, he honestly believed that he did not owe allegiance to any other country. The accused person was subsequently charged with the offences in the charge sheet.

It is based on these facts that the accused person, James Gyakye Quayson, has been arraigned for trial.