Eleven months of service as Minister of Justice and Attorney General is not a record in the history of the Office of the Attorney General in Ghana. The evidence is openly on display in front of, Mr. Dame, the Attorney General’s office, that there were other Attorneys General who served in that office for less than eleven months: eleven months is not therefore a record. I am, without any regrets, proud of putting Ghana First and upholding my constitutional oath by leaving office as Attorney General fighting corruption just as I resigned as the SP from President Nana Akufo Addo’s Government on the same account of “The Family’s Corruption”.

This article demonstrates what consequences await any appointee of this Government who takes literally, as I did, the President’s rhetoric of “be citizens’ and not “spectators”. The Agyapa Royalties Transactions anti-corruption analysis and assessment report was done professionally without fear or favour, affection, or ill will. When our political rhetorical President saw that the report implicated him, his family, and friends in suspected corruption activities, an official government anti-corruption assessment supported by law became an instrument of political damage control for his government. The President not only sought to interfere for me to shelve the report from the public, but…

The Office of the Special Prosecutor has been in a vulnerable state since the assumption of the duties of the Special Prosecutor by the Deputy Special Prosecutor by operation of law. Apart from Board meetings held in November and December 2020 no Board meeting to the best of my knowledge has been held since the Chief of Staff’s “very urgent” directives issued on 12/012021. Crucial decisions affecting an independent anti-corruption agency are being taken singlehandedly by one person on instructions even after being passed over for nomination for consideration and possible approval. A new Special Prosecutor would thus have been undermined….

My resignation as the first Special Prosecutor was the result of the endemic attitude of President, Nana Akufo Addo’s penchant to usurp the constitutional authority of investigators and prosecutors in criminal justice administration as he tried to do in the Agyapa Royalties Transaction Anti-Corruption Risk Assessment Report implicating him. It had nothing to do with the Members of Parliament double salaries which I never saw nor handled during my tenure. The President’s responses to the media on 13th December 2018 is evidence that this President determines who may be prosecuted for crime and not the Attorney General or Special Prosecutor…

By all means let anybody root for his or her preferred Special Prosecutor as an insurance against prosecution for corruption in Government but leave me out of the propaganda. I am honouring an undertaking by my silence in not commenting on public affairs. Stop tempting me to speak by the defaming propaganda against me. It will not be in anyone’s interest.

The handing over of power by an African leader after two four-year terms under a Constitutional regime in Africa which you accomplished is a notable event in the political history of Ghana and Africa. Not all who have been Presidents or Heads of State have been of equal merit, or of at least equal importance. Presidents or Heads of State, like other men, vary in their importance on their generations and history. Some even in their lifetime never raised a ripple on the surface of politics and whose names are now forgotten by all but students of their period…

The 1992 Constitution enjoins the President and the Government of Ghana to practice good governance based on “Freedom, Justice, Probity and Accountability” and to avoid infringing on the rights and freedoms guaranteed the individual citizen under the Constitution. The disclosure of half-truths by the President to do wrong to any citizen or person living under the protection of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana for performing his professional duty in reporting on a statutory matter such as the Agyapa Royalties Transactions is inconsistent with and contravenes the Presidential Oath of office contained in the Second Schedule of the Constitution. The sovereign…

The 1992 Constitution enjoins every Ghanaian to defend it and that is what I am doing now as a citizen of Ghana with my advocacy on the President’s official response to me personally as an ordinary citizen after officially accepting my resignation from my previous office on account of the Government’s reaction for professionally conducting the Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions Anti-Corruption Assessment Report. Come what may, I shall not be intimidated from defending the 1992 Constitution. Ghana First!

I am a proud offspring of all those initial eleven “Otafor” Members of Parliament who defended democracy in the infant Ghana. They were men of impeccable honour and integrity despite their Certificate A and B teacher training certificates because the British did not consider education worthy of the NT who were to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. I am an offspring of those gallant leaders of the NT which became an inseparable part Ghana. I am an “Otani” and a citizen of Ghana under the 1992 Constitution till I am buried in the bosom of my motherland….

The Government may wish to invite a trusted and friendly anti-corruption country such as Singapore or the United Kingdom or the United States or Denmark to send independent anti-corruption officers to replicate my analysis and anti-corruption assessment work giving rise to the report using the same source letters and documents. I am confident professionally and ethically that they will arrive at the same anti-corruption assessments contained in the Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions report. I explained this to my dear friend the Minister of Finance when he visited me as early as 5:36 am on the morning of 22nd October 2020 in the company of a mutual friend. I pray that the President takes up this challenge so that the concerted effort he is leading to throw me under the bus and bringing my reputation into disrepute for acting professionally in the Agyapa anti-corruption assessment report in which the President has a personal interest comes to an end.

The concerted efforts led by the President of Ghana and his Government to discredit my integrity for producing a professional report on the analysis of the risk of the prevention of corruption and anti-corruption assessment is bound to fail because the Ghanaian of 2020 is not the Ghanaian of 2016 who believed the mere rhetoric of fighting corruption. The attempt to divert attention from the serious suspected breaches of corruption and corruption-related laws disclosed in the anti-corruption assessment contained in the Agyapa report by making false and frivolous allegations against my person will fail because truth shall always triumph over falsehood.

On Monday, 3rd February 2020, the Office of the Special Prosecutor received from the Secretary to the President a letter referring allegations of bribery of Ghanaian Officials in the aircraft deal, as disclosed in litigation taking place in the UK and USA. The Special Prosecutor has determined that the said referral and deferred prosecution agreements and judgments accompanying them raise reasonable suspicion of the commission of corruption and corruption-related offences of bribery of public officers and the use of public office by public officers for private profit. A preliminary investigation has accordingly been opened. The Office of the Special Prosecutor appeals to the public not to speculate or politicize the disclosures so as to allow this Office to treat these as suspected crimes simpliciter, pending the conclusion of the investigation.

This submission is made as ordered by the Supreme Court on 16th October 2019, to assist the Attorney General by providing available evidence in order to enable the the enforcement of the judgment debt against Waterville Holdings (BVI) Limited.

Is the hearsay falsehood being put out by the Acting Director of Public Affairs of Parliament alleging claims of sabotage simply a misguided or malicious reaction to the Special Prosecutor’s latest trending video interview with David Ampofo? Even though this Acting Director has signed a press release allegedly on behalf of the Parliamentary Service, the truth is that she did not attend the meeting and her commentary is simply hearsay. Let anyone of the Leadership of Parliament who was present at the meeting with the Special Prosecutor and his Deputy on 4th June 2019 rather speak up about what transpired at the meeting so that the Office of the Special Prosecutor can publish its contemporaneous memorandum (in which the meeting events were recorded) for those interested to judge as to what truly and really transpired at the meeting.

It is more than one full year since an Arbitration Tribunal brought the arbitration proceedings in the Waterville Judgment Debt Case to an end in a manner favourable to the Republic of Ghana. I am returning to court in my personal capacity as the only person with enough vested interest in the conclusion of the case after having procured the decision, orders and directions of the Court contained in the judgment dated 14th June 2013. Even though I bring this application in my personal capacity as the Plaintiff/Applicant in the above case, I have since 23rd February 2018 been the Special Prosecutor of Ghana with the mandate to prevent, investigate, prosecute, and recover assets and manage proceeds of corruption and corruption-related offences. Consequently, I am also at the time of filing this application responsible for preventing the non-enforcement of the Court’s 2013 judgment which was actuated by an unconstitutional create, loot, and share syndrome as lucidly and ably articulated in this Court’s said judgment.

Presented at Annual Conference of the Internal Audit Agency, Accra Conference Center, 14 - 15 August 2019. Lessons learned since 1957 show that the extent to which the role played by the Office of the Special Prosecutor in protecting the nation’s resources succeeds or fails, will depend on how the President and his Government’s anti-corruption vision is either supported or obstructed by his political and other public office appointees. In the past eighteen months there has been latent resistance and, currently, massive bi-partisan pressure is being exerted to tacitly influence decisions of the Courts around the Special Prosecutor’s qualifications for his appointment and interpretation of his execution mandate. If these actions succeed, they will only demonstrate to the electorate in Ghana and the international community the absurdity of Ghana’s commitment to the goal of combating corruption and protecting the nation’s resources through the instrumentality of an independent and impartial Special Prosecutor.

The jurisdiction of the Office of the Special Prosecutor is strictly provided for under the Act; it is more restrictive than most global anti-corruption agencies, with a limited number of offences that the Office may investigate. Members of the public who are still being misled to believe that the Office may investigate anything beyond the ten offences within its mandate, may start to lose trust. I wish them to understand that my limited jurisdiction means that the balance of criminal offences in the Criminal Offences Act that have not been apportioned to the Office and that deal with several felonies, have to be investigated by various other law and order enforcement agencies headed by among others, the Inspector General of Police, the Director-General CID, the Executive Director Economic and Organized Crime Office, the Director of the Bureau of National Investigations, the Director-General of the Ghana Immigration Service, The Executive Secretary for the Financial Intelligence Center, the National Security Coordinator, and the Director of Public Prosecutions. However, I state again I am committed to fully executing my mandate, and will continue to prosecute all cases under my jurisdiction to the fullest of the powers granted to the Office of the Special Prosecutor.

I have never been paid any money by any Government in my official capacity or because of my position as the Special Prosecutor as a judgment debt. Your intentional, malicious and deliberate defamatory words used to describe any payments to me of any part of the outstanding orders of the Court given on 4th September 2014 were understood by ordinary and right thinking members of the public to mean and you intended them to mean that the Government unlawfully had colluded with me in my capacity as the Special Prosecutor to dubiously pay me some money and other benefits resulting from Court orders.

The lies being bandied in the media should stop. I never consulted any person or political party before accepting my nomination to be put forward for approval as Special Prosecutor. Moreover, nobody is going to push or make me jump from the challenges of fighting public office corruption unless the Supreme Court declares the provisions of the Act under which I was appointed unconstitutional, I am impeached or I become convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the mutual promises and undertakings made with me at my nomination to fight the canker of corruption were not intended to be actualized in practice.

I wish Hon. Yaw Buaben Asamoa to understand that the Office of the Special Prosecutor is governed by statute and I am mandated to lead it in the achievement of that mandate. I do not need any direct or indirect instructions from any office holder of any political party like him. It is time for him and others like him from other political parties to stop confusing the fact that I was appointed by the President of the Republic to mean that it created a vested right in the political party which supported him to win the elections to instruct or direct me as the Special Prosecutor. I was appointed by the President in his capacity as the Executive Authority of Ghana under the 1992 Constitution and not as the flag-bearer of any political party. Should he think that I am talking too much and not doing my job the simple solution is for him to have me removed from office. Until then he should leave me alone to continue to exercise the independent duties of my office in accordance with my oath before Parliament and my oath at my appointment as the Special Prosecutor.