The Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Mr. Joe Ghartey has withdrawn the 30 counts of multiple charges preferred against former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings and five others. The accused are now facing 15 fresh charges for their alleged involvement in wilfully causing financial loss to the State in respect of the divestiture of the GIHOC Cannery at Nsawam. "The Prosecution has withdrawn case Number CR 126 against the accused persons and replaced them with fresh charges," Mr Ghartey told the Fast Track High Court (FTC) in Accra presided over by Mr Justice P. Baffoe Bonnie. As a result, the trial judge freed them, but in what seemed to be "discharge for want of prosecution", the 15 charges were shortly afterwards read out again. The other five accused persons are Emmanuel Amuzu Agbodo, a former Executive Secretary of the Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC), Thomas Benson Owusu, a former Accountant of the DIC, Kwame Peprah, a former Minister of Finance and former Chairman of the DIC, Sherry Ayittey, Managing Director of Caridem Development Company Limited, and Caridem as an entity. They are variously charged with 15 counts of conspiracy, causing financial loss to public property, conspiracy to obtain public property by false statement, obtaining public property by false statement and uttering document. They have all denied the offences and have been admitted to self-recognisance bail. The accused persons were alleged to have caused loss to public property running into billions of cedis, following the acquisition of GIHOC Cannery at Nsawam, a government cannery, by Caridem Development Company Limited in 1995 when the cannery was divested. Caridem is owned by the 31st December Women's Movement (DWM). Source: GNA