THE OFFICE OF SPECIAL PROSECUTOR- ANOTHER WRINKLE TO WASTE PUBLIC FINANCIAL RESOURCES

Sometimes, I am tempted to weep in frustration at our situation. I have wondered when we would get it right, if
we would ever get it right.
Last week, Lawyer Kissi Agyebeng, who is the man who was selected by President Akufo-Addo, issued a report
spanning less than three dozen pages, in which he came to the conclusion that though former President John
Dramani was the man who was described as Government Official 1 in some judicial findings in the United States,
France and the United Kingdom, the investigation could not establish that Mr. Mahama is culpable of any
wrongdoing.
After perusing this report, I have arrived at the firm and inalienable and inexorable conclusion that the Office of
Special Prosecutor (OSP), like all the previous efforts before it (Serious Fraud Office, Economic and Organized
Crime Office and the host of others) before it, is another waste of public funds. And I am not talking about the final
conclusion on Mr. Mahama. The report is woefully incompetent, not because of its conclusions, but because of
how it was conducted.
To begin with, we must carefully examine the capabilities and training of the people who form the investigation, or
are likely to form the investigation. In all likelihood, they would be products of the Ghana Police Service Training
School, or the Ghana School of Law and the Bachelor of Laws institutions that train such people in Ghana. The fact
of the matter, is that these two institutions do not train its products with the kind of skillsets for the investigation
that the OSP set out to conduct in the Airbus scandal.
The second reason why the report is inept and incompetent, is that right from the onset, it becomes clear that the
OSP depended and intentioned to depend heavily on the investigations conducted by the United States, France
and the United Kingdom. It is instructive that Ghana, independently, at no point until the issue of bribery was
raised in those western nations, had no problems with the acquisition of the Airbus airplanes for the Ghana Armed
Forces (GAF). The whistle was only blown here, because other nations found the procurement to be flawed and
beset with corruption. Reading the OSP report, this is a strain that permeates it; otherwise, it would be hard to
rationalize why the OSP would identify that dealings within the Mahama Family affected the conduct of Mr.
Mahama, or had the potential to affect the conduct of Mr. Mahama.
The third reason why the investigation and its concomitant report are flawed, is that the OSP did not set out the
laws it hoped to identify as being breached. In Ghana, we have several laws, in the Criminal Offences Code and in
the Financial Administration Act, which could have been identified as being possibly breached. The OSP did not do
this.
Fourth, the report makes it clear that it depended on two primary sources to arrive it its conclusions; the first is the
decisions of the adjudicating bodies in France, the United States and the United Kingdom, and the second source,
was the interviews with the individuals who were identified in those judicial findings. The OSP made no further
efforts.
But what efforts could the OSP have made?
I submit that the OSP could have embarked on many directions. First, the OSP could have established a timeline of
events. The Judicial Decisions which it used as a primary source, sets out detailed events, personalities and
timelines. The OSP had the opportunity to establish further details, events and timelines to establish how the
events in its primary source, correlate with events locally. For instance, when did Airbus SE communicate with its
agents on the delays in securing parliamentary approval in Ghana, and when did parliamentary approval happen in
Ghana?
The OSP could have set out every key event, and how that event correlated with events in Ghana, but it did
nothing of the source.
Secondly, the OSP could have followed the money. Ghana Government paid Airbus SE for the supply, and the latter
also paid its agents. Since these agents are believed to have been in cahoots with Ghanaian government officials,
the OSP could have made efforts to establish whether or not there was any financial link between the government
officials, and the agents that Airbus SE used in suborning the will of the Ghanaian Government. Yet the OSP report
made no mention of any such effort, or attempted to make any of the efforts detailed above.
One day, at some point, Ghana would establish the cost of the OSP investigation into this affair, that birthed the 25
pages of drivel, and we would all come to the conclusion, that we have been had, once again, by the very
institution that was supposed to save us. The Office of Special Prosecutor set-up, is just one more wrinkle to waste
taxpayers’ funds.
(This article was published in the column Periscope Depth in the Daily Searchlight of 12 th August, 2024).