Legal practitioner and one of the five members of Operation Recover All the Loot (ORAL) team, lawyer Martin Kpebu, has accused the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) of delaying investigations into the corruption of former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta.
Ken Ofori-Atta who served as Ghana’s Finance Minister from 2017 to 2024 was recently declared wanted for corruption allegations by the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng.
Although Ofori-Atta’s arrest warrant brought satisfaction to the general public, who are witnessing a Ghana they never thought they would, Martin Kpebu is of the view that the OSP could’ve done a more efficient job.
“I’m not happy because Kissi Agyebeng has been lackadaisical in this investigation. Very lackadaisical. This SML scandal, National Cathedral – these are cases that have been with us for years”
Lawyer Martin Kpebu
His accusation of a “lackadaisical” investigation is based on how long it took the OSP to issue a warrant for Ofori-Atta’s arrest, given his obvious involvement in the longstanding cases he is now wanted for.
“Kissi Agyebeng took office in August/September 2021. National Cathedral has been since 2017 and let’s say the time the government started putting in money which raised a lot of concern was from 2019, right?”
“So how come Kissi Agyebeng sat on his hands all these years and now that Ofori-Atta says he’s going for medical treatment, then Kissi Agyabeng says he’s wanted? I mean, I don’t know. It doesn’t add up at all”
Lawyer Martin Kpebu
Despite admitting that interference from former President Nana Akuffo Addo might have derailed the progress of the OSP’s investigations, he insisted that overwhelming evidence on the National Cathedral scandal should have been enough for Kissi Agyemang to go after the former Finance Minister.
Kissi Agyemang should have leveraged the “facts” that were out in the “public domain” for his “work” on the National Cathedral case, Martin Kpebu noted.
“The NDC fought a good fight, they were able to expose government spending money. Akuffo Addo said initially that, oh, it’s gonna be private sector led and then he went on and gave land, then he started pumping in money, which is now about $58,000,000. So my point is that these facts are publicly known. Why couldn’t you invite Ofori-Atta years ago?”
Lawyer Martin Kpebu
He levied the same complaint against the delay in the SML scandal of 2023 investigations, rationalizing timelines and pointing out that the OSP had enough time to adequately take action. “You had the whole of 2024. You didn’t take action” he accused.
If the OSP was genuinely investigating and fulfilling its mandate all the while, then Kpebu is convinced that “it was too slow”.
He advanced his position by referring to the staff capacity of the OSP. In the worst case scenario, the OSP had “at least 180 from about September 2023, that was even before the SML matter broke”.
“OSP had a lot of staff, so I expected that you’d put some staff on these cases” he added. With their “clearance to hire 230 on paper”, he was expecting more expedient results on their work on these cases.
“How many are these cases?”, he asked, baffled at the excessive delay.
According to Kpebu, the OSP declaring Ken Ofori Atta wanted now when he’s traveled, is not worth the pats on the back that he’s been receiving.
“Ofori-Atta has done a lot of bad things, we are accusing him of corruption etcetera, but I’m a lawyer, I deal with facts. The facts on the table today don’t enable me to say anything against Ofori-Atta; rather the facts point to Kissi’s managerial abilities. They come into grave question”.
“There are serious questions to answer about his managerial abilities I mean, how?”
Lawyer Martin Kpebu
A Performative OSP
In response to the public opinion that the OSP’s arrest warrant for Ofori-Atta was a performative action meant to justify its existence to the new government, Kpebu said that “democracy is crowd wisdom”.
In his opinion, whether or not it holds merit should not be dismissed easily. He warned that oftentimes, in democracies, the people do not speculate amiss.
“Those are citizens’ opinions. It’s based on what they have also seen. I can’t dismiss them and as a matter of fact, we should give room, give a lot of room for the naysayers, for the doubting Thomas’”
Lawyer Martin Kpebu
Kpebu explained that such allegations, when advanced, “puts Kissi in the spotlight” and “challenge him” to “up his game”. He described allowing other people’s opinion to have speech as an “eclectic approach” to democracy and encouraged it.
“So I would say that give it more vent, that’s how a democracy survives. Let’s not shut them down”.
Lawyer Martin Kpebu
He however explained that the OSP pursuing Ken Ofori Atta as an eye service for the new President Mahama administration was unnecessary since their office was not under any threat of cancellation.
“Nobody has presented a bill to parliament that they want to cancel OSP. I don’t think they needed to do what they did yesterday in order to justify their existence, no”.
Lawyer Martin Kpebu
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