Foreign Affairs Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchewey has sued Prime Mark Company Limited – publishers of the Herald Newspaper for defamation.
Joined to the suit, is the Managing Editor of the newspaper, Larry Dogbe.
The Minister in her writ argued that on June 10, 2019, her attention was drawn to a defamatory front-page newspaper publication captioned “Judge releases Minister’s Notororious boy from jail with the same story on the defendants online portal, the heraldgahna.com.”
In the suit sighted by citinewsroom.com, Madam Botchwey said the defamatory publication by the defendants suggested that she had engaged in illegal activities or abetted the commission of a crime against the state by using her political influence to order the release of a convicted criminal who was serving a lawful prison sentence in jail.
According to the Anyaa Sowutuom Constituency legislator, the claims made by the newspaper are defamatory and were made without basis adding that it was “ostensibly intended to tarnish her hard-won reputation.”
Having shot down the allegations levelled against her, she is therefore through her solicitors, seeking compensatory damages in the sum of GHc10, 000, 000 for loss of reputation against the defendants together with general damages.
Among her reliefs, the Minister is also demanding an order of injunction directed at the defendants, agents, assigns, privies from continuing to make a further defamatory publication about the plaintiff.
Madam Ayorkor Botchwey wants another order of the court directed at the defendants to retract the said defamatory publication and render an unqualified apology in the same prominence as the defamatory publication.
Last week, the minister sued the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, publishers of the Africawatch Magazine, General Media Strategies Inc. over the publication of some alleged defamatory piece against her with regards to the newly opened Ghana’s Embassy in Oslo, the capital of Norway.
Joined to the lawsuit was the editor of the magazine, Steve Mallory, who wrote the piece.
The magazine accused the Ghanaian government of buying two properties – one for the chancery and the other for the Ambassador’s residence at the cost of US$16.5 million.
Through her lawyers, she described the publication as “defamatory and without any basis.”
She is among other things demanding a retraction and an unqualified apology from the defendants and “compensatory damages in the sum of US$ 20 million for loss of reputation against the defendants.”