Supreme Court criticises police for 'kululu' with complainant in $270,000 gold export scam case

' Graphic Online's Justice Agbenorsi reports that a police investigator's close relationship with a complainant (a foreign national) in a criminal trial has drawn sharp criticism from the Supreme Court, which held that the officer showed a real likelihood of bias against two men who stood trial at the High Court in a $270,000 gold export scam case.

Finding The court thought that Detective Chief Inspector George Kingsley Adu, the investigator who eventually handled the case, had grown notably close to the complainant, Roberto Maria Di Lorenzo, over the course of the investigation, even accompanying him to the airport when he left Ghana in December.

Reasons The Supreme Court found that the complainant's absence from trial was fatal to the prosecution's case, since the prosecution relied on hearsay evidence from an interpreter without proving the complainant was genuinely unavailable to testify.