Former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Godfred Dame has said his office was unaware of any notice of appeal filed in 2024 by former MASLOC CEO, Sedina Tamakloe-Attionu following her conviction while he was in office.
In a statement issued by Dame on Friday, July 31, he explained that State Attorneys in April 2026 had indicated in both their written and oral submissions filed to the Court of Appeal that “they had not been served with a notice of the appeal and that, they became aware of the proceedings only after the Court of Appeal directed the Parties to file their written submissions.”
“No notice of an appeal filed by Sedina Attionu in 2024 came to the attention of the Office of Attorney-General in my tenure,” Godfred Dame asserted.
The Court of Appeal has overturned the 10-year jail sentence handed to Sedina Tamakloe Attionu.
Sedina was acquitted after the court ruled that the former MASLOC CEO should not have been sentenced, as the prosecution could not prove the charges levelled against her.
In April 2024, an Accra High Court handed Attionu a 10-year prison sentence with hard labour after finding her guilty of causing financial loss to the state.
She was sentenced in absentia as she was out of the country at the time the judgement was given.
She was convicted of 78 counts of offences, including stealing, causing financial loss to the state, money laundering.
Dame further opined that throughout the extradition proceedings for Sedina, which commenced in July, 2024 and concluded in April, 2026, there was no mention of an appeal filed by Sedina Attionu in 2024 against her judgment.
This, he said did not even come up in the processes filed by Sedina Tamakloe in the US District Court.
The former A-G noted that his attention has been drawn to a “false and devious narrative” being churned out by communicators of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that a notice appeal was filed in 2024.
According to him, this is only a plot to “shift the blame for the acquittal of Madam Sedina Tamakloe-Attionu onto the Akufo-Addo Government and principally my good self as the immediate past Attorney-General and Minister for Justice.”
Dame argued that, in any case, even if a notice of appeal against the conviction was filed by Sedina while he was in office, the appeal notice has become “completely immaterial” as Sedina did not take any further step until the NDC came back to power.
“Thus, the Republic had to do nothing in 2024 in terms of the conduct of that appeal,” he wrote.
He stressed that his only duty as the former Attorney-General who superintended the successful prosecution of Sedina Tamakloe was to ensure that the convicted person is extradited to serve her jail sentence in Ghana.
“I thus took the important step to pursue an extradition request. The competence of my extradition request was upheld in the Order of the United States District Court of Nevada on 9th April, 2026, which confirmed the extradition and committed Ms. Attionu to custody pending her extradition by the Secretary of State,” he added.
In his narration, Dame said lawyers for Sedina Tamakloe only obtained leave from the Court of Appeal to file written submissions on February 10, 2026 and proceeded to file the said written submissions on February 12, 2026 by which time he was no longer serving as the Attorney-General.
Dame claimed that even prosecuting state attorneys were surprised when they were served with the written submissions of the accused on February 16, 2026 because per his narration, the state prosecutors had no prior notice of the pendency of any proceedings.
“Nonetheless, they put together written submissions in opposition to the appeal and applied for leave from the Court of Appeal to file same, which they did on on 9th April, 2026,” he said.
He added: “In their written submissions, the Principal State Attorney repeated her complaints about an incomplete record of appeal, an omission from the record of all the exhibits tendered by the Prosecution at the trial and the fact that they “became aware of the instant proceeding… after the Court had directed the Parties to file their written submissions”.
According to Godfred Dame, the acquittal of Sedina Tamakloe “smacks of an orchestration to clear” Sedina of “felonious acts.”
He accused the current Attorney-General, Dr. Dominic Ayine of being bias, citing his recent entry of noelle prosequi in cases against key NDC members.
“The development is consistent with the predilection of the Attorney-General to discontinue all cases which were being prosecuted against leading members and affiliates of the NDC.
“It highlights the growing perception of Ghana’s current justice system – two sets of law for two sets of people. Equality before the law exists only in theory and is not lived practically. The Sedina Scandal is the closest Ghana has been to a re-enactment of the Woyome Scandal,” Dame observed.
He urged Ghanaians to demand more from a government which set out to fight corruption by instituting the ORAL policy only to free its members standing trial.
“Ghanaians ought to demand more from a government which set out after inauguration, to discontinue all criminal cases pending against its leading members only to launch, immediately thereafter, a policy of ORAL by which it aggressively parades leading members of the opposition in court on alleged corruption related offences in trials conducted under extremely difficult conditions.”
He said the Attorney-General “must be held to very high standards” in the prosecution of cases.
“A justice system in which political friends face no accountability and time-honoured rules are compromised for their comfort whilst political opponents are treated like second-class citizens and struggle for their basic rights and freedoms to be respected in criminal trials reflects poorly on the State,” he concluded.
