The Report of the Auditor-General on the Public Accounts of Ghana has uncovered a troubling case of pension payments continuing long after the beneficiaries had died.
According to the report, submitted to Parliament by immediate past Auditor-General Johnson Akuamoah Asiedu under the Audit Service of Ghana, four deceased pensioners were paid a total amount of GH¢7,494,975.34 between February 2019 and March 2026.
The finding forms part of the broader audit covering Ministries, Departments and Other Agencies for the year ended December 31, 2025, and stands out for the length of time the payments continued undetected, spanning more than seven years before the irregularity came to light.
A Clear Breach of Financial Regulations
The report states plainly that these payments occurred contrary to Regulation 88 of the Public Financial Management Regulations, 2019, known formally as L.I. 2378.
This regulation governs how pension payments must be managed and discontinued once a beneficiary passes away, making the continued disbursement of funds to deceased individuals a direct violation of established financial rules rather than a matter of ambiguous interpretation.
The scale of the amount involved, exceeding GH¢7.4 million, raises immediate questions about the internal controls meant to flag a pensioner’s death and halt further payments.
A breakdown spanning seven years suggests that whatever verification systems exist within the payroll structure failed to catch the discrepancy for an extended period.
Auditor-General Recommends Recovery from Next of Kin
In response to the finding, the Auditor-General recommended that the Controller and Accountant-General recover the full amount of GH¢7,494,975.34 from the next of kin of the deceased pensioners.
The report specifies that this recovery should include interest calculated at the prevailing Bank of Ghana rate, ensuring that the state does not simply recoup the original sum but accounts for the time value of the funds wrongly disbursed.
Once recovered, the report directs that the funds be paid into the Auditor-General’s Recoveries Account at the Bank of Ghana, the designated channel for returning misappropriated or wrongly paid public funds back into government coffers.
Legal Action Threatened if Recovery Fails
The Auditor-General’s recommendations do not stop at simply requesting repayment. The report states that failing recovery from the next of kin, legal action should be instituted against both the bankers involved and the next of kin of the deceased pensioners.
This dual threat of legal consequence signals that the Auditor-General views the matter seriously enough to pursue formal legal channels should the initial recovery request go unanswered.
The mention of bankers alongside next of kin suggests that financial institutions handling these pension accounts may also bear some responsibility for continuing to process payments on accounts belonging to deceased individuals, an aspect of the case that could extend accountability beyond the families who received the funds.
What This Case Reveals About Payroll Oversight
This finding adds to a broader pattern the Auditor-General’s report has identified across government payroll systems, where irregularities tied to inadequate verification and oversight have allowed funds to flow to unintended recipients.
The seven year span involved in this particular case points to a systemic gap rather than an isolated clerical error, since a single year of unnoticed payment might be explained by administrative delay.
But payments continuing from 2019 through as late as March 2026 suggest deeper structural weaknesses in how the pension system verifies the status of its beneficiaries.
For a system responsible for disbursing public funds to thousands of pensioners across the country, this case illustrates how gaps in death notification, record reconciliation, or bank account monitoring can allow significant sums to leak out of public coffers over extended periods without detection.
With the Auditor-General’s recommendations now on record, attention turns to whether the Controller and Accountant-General can successfully trace and recover the GH¢7,494,975.34 from the affected families.
The outcome will likely depend on how cooperative the next of kin prove to be, and whether the banking institutions involved face any scrutiny over their role in continuing to process these payments.
More broadly, this case may prompt renewed calls for tighter reconciliation between death records and pension payment systems, a gap that, if left unaddressed, could allow similar cases to persist undetected in the years ahead.
READ ALSO: PwC Predicts Major Shake-Up for Ghana Banks
