Cecilia Dapaah and her husband at the court yesterday
Former Minister for the then Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Abena Dapaah mounted the witness box yesterday to testify against two of her former housemaids and five others standing trial for huge sums of monies and accessories stolen from her home.
She told the court that a total of $410,000, €300,000 and GH¢350,000 were stolen from her home after Patience Botwe, who she had fired, entered one of their rooms.
Patience Botwe and Sarah Agyei, the two housemaids, have been charged for conspiracy and stealing, while Benjamin Sowah, Malik Dauda, Christiana Achab, Job Pomary and Yahaya Sumaila, are facing charges of dishonestly receiving from the stolen money.
While the trial is ongoing, Patience Botwe, Sarah Agyei, Benjamin Sowah, Malik Dauda, and Yahaya Sumaila have chosen to plea-bargain with the Office of the Attorney General, for a lighter punishment.
Madam Dapaah, in her evidence-in-chief, detailed the total cost of the jewellery stolen by the housemaids, totalling $95,500.
The items include 11 sets of earrings and pendants, each costing $3,000, bringing the total to $33,000; four (4) gold bangles which cost $3,500 each, totalling $14,000; 15 gold earring sets valued at $1,000.
The rest are diamond set earrings, pendants and bangles bought at $9,500 and 12 chains which cost $2,000 each, totalling $24,000.
Madam Dapaah told the court their first housemaid, Sarah Agyei got pregnant and was struggling to bend down, so she asked Dauda to enquire from Patience Botwe who happens to be the mother of his child if she was interested in coming to clean the compound as she was unemployed at the time.
The accused person “accepted the offer and we agreed that she would come to the house twice a week to clean the compound but will not be resident in our house.”
Madam Dapaah told the court Patience Botwe worked in her house for about three (3) months, but “I sacked her because she and Malik Dauda would quarrel anytime she came to our house, because she went home very late to him under the false pretext of closing late.”
She said she emphatically warned Patience Botwe never to come back to the house, but in the month of October 2022, when she traveled to Kumasi for a funeral, she received a phone call from the husband that he had caught Patience Botwe in one of the bedrooms at their house which serves as a storeroom.
Upon her return and taking stock of the items in the room, she realised that a substantial number of her valuable clothes (sewn and unsewn), kente cloths, dresses, skirt suits, blouses, handbags, lace fabrics, and perfumes were all missing.
“We also found out that huge sums of money had been stolen from our storeroom. This included an amount of $210,000 which belonged to my deceased brother Nana Akwasi Essan Il alias Charles Dapaah,” she disclosed.
She said the $210,000 was part of an amount of $800,000 that her elder brother Henry Osei Kwabena brought to her upon the instructions of their mother for safe keeping, after Nana Akwasi Essan Il’s demise.
Other monies stolen include $200,000 belonging to Dorcas Wiredua, a client and relative of her husband; £300,000 belonging to her husband; GH¢300,000 being contributions that she and her siblings made towards the then upcoming final funeral rite of their late mother Nana Ode Nyarko II, and GH¢50,000 being her personal money.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak