Who is the Problem: The OSP, or the SP Kissi Agyebeng?
The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) was established as Ghana’s institutional answer to impunity – a firewall between corruption and political interference. It was meant to make integrity enforceable. Yet under Kissi Agyebeng, it has been reconfigured into a platform for the rule of public perception. This is not a mere operational failure; it is a fundamental corruption of the prosecutorial function, where the power to accuse has strategically replaced the obligation to prove. Independence, once its shield, has become its weapon.
The Operating Principle: Conviction by Announcement
The OSP’s methodology is defined by a simple, destructive inversion. The legal process – investigation, charge, trial, and verdict – has been reordered. The public announcement of guilt now comes first and swift, leveraging media saturation to create a conclusive narrative. The subsequent courtroom drama becomes a mere formality, often rendering an eventual acquittal meaningless. The sentence is delivered by headline; any later judicial proceeding is just an appeal against a conviction already secured.
The Evidence of Failure: Five Case Studies in Legal Collapse
1. Cecilia Dapaah: The Premature Condemnation
The OSP’s response to the discovery of funds at Cecilia Dapaah’s residence was theatrical: public arrest with helicopters
flying amist full live TV3 coverage. All assets – cash and in kind – were seized, and accounts frozen. From that moment, in the eyes of the nation, Cecilia Dapaah was convicted. The trial had been televised, the verdict delivered by public outrage. She stood condemned as a common thief and fraudster, long before the courts could speak. The agency achieved her resignation and public condemnation within days. However, the OSP’s actions were severely rebuked when the High Court disagreed with the OSP’s freezing orders and directed the release of all seized money to Ms. Dapaah and her husband. Subsequent to this, the OSP dropped its core corruption case, conceding a lack of “direct immediate evidence.” The OSP constructed a public edifice of guilt on a legal foundation that proved to be sand.
2. Ken Ofori-Atta: The Punitive Label
The OSP’s actions against former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta represent the most egregious example of media theatrics. Despite the OSP’s knowledge that Ofori-Atta was abroad undergoing prostate cancer treatment – with medical letters served to both the OSP and the government – the Special Prosecutor went ahead to declare him a “fugitive from justice,” requesting an INTERPOL Red Notice. This action ruined a reputation built over three decades as a global investment banker, delivered by a press release that imposed a global brand of criminality without waiting for a judicial finding.
3. Colonel (Rtd.) Kwadwo Damoah: Vindicated After His Profession Was Destroyed
The OSP’s highly publicized investigative report on the Labianca Group publicly indicted the actions of former Customs Commissioner Colonel (Rtd.) Kwadwo Damoah. While the OSP secured an administrative recovery from the company, the officer’s career was ruined by the report’s findings. The ultimate abuse became stark when Col. Damoah later went to the High Court and was judicially cleared of the OSP’s adverse findings, which the court ruled the OSP had no mandate to make. The official’s moral capital was destroyed by findings that were ultimately legally unsustainable.
4. The Estate of Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie (‘Sir John’): Procedural Failure
The widely publicized Freezing Order placed on the assets of the late Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie confirmed the OSP’s procedural sloppiness. The High Court ultimately dismissed the OSP’s application to confirm the freezing order, specifically finding that the OSP had filed the application under the wrong section of its own governing Act (the confiscation section rather than the freezing section). This fundamental legal error ensured the OSP’s action, while effective in destroying the estate’s public reputation, was dead on arrival in the courtroom.
5. Dr. Mustapha Hamid: The Perpetual Accusation
In the NPA Extortion case involving former CEO Dr. Mustapha Hamid, the OSP filed charges that were immediately reported across all media platforms. Crucially, the OSP then filed repeated amendments, expanding the charge sheet from 25 counts to 54 counts. This tactic of continuously revising and expanding charges ensures the accused remains in a state of permanent provisional guilt, replacing justice with perpetual scrutiny.
The Inevitable Consequences
Across these cases, a pattern emerges – legal indiscipline – masked as zeal. The OSP has achieved volume without verdicts. The absence of sustained convictions undermines both its credibility and its constitutional purpose. If this trend continues, the office risks institutional irrelevance and potential legal liability to the state.
The perception of activism without accuracy will embolden those lobbying for the OSP’s abolition.
Postscript: What a “Freezing Order” Means
The Ghanaian public must understand a crucial distinction that the Special Prosecutor often blurs in his public statements regarding financial victories.
A “Freezing Order” is a temporary, investigative tool authorized by law to prevent a person from selling, transferring, or dissipating property while an investigation is ongoing.
However, a Freezing Order does not amount to money or property recovered to the state, nor does it mean the accused or suspected person acquired those assets through corrupt or illegal means.
The OSP’s public claims often fail to clarify this. For instance, in the NPA-UPPF case, the OSP claimed to have frozen GHS 100 million. This claim was disputed by Dr. Mustapha Hamid’s lawyers. The critical takeaway is that a frozen asset remains the property of the accused until a court delivers a final conviction for corruption and issues a Confiscation or Forfeiture Order. Until then, the freezing order is merely a placeholder, and treating it as a final victory for the state is misleading the public and unjustly condemning the individual.
The Point of No Return
The OSP now stands at a constitutional precipice. It can continue as an engine of preemptive conviction, in which case it will inevitably face judicial censure, legislative curtailment, and permanent erosion of public trust. Or it can undertake a profound reckoning with its own corrupted methodology.
There is no middle ground. The evidence demonstrates that an institution created to combat corruption cannot itself be corrupt – not in its methods, not in its relationship with truth. The OSP’s greatest failure is not its lack of convictions, but its demonstration of how anti-corruption institutions can become instruments of injustice. It has pursued the politically expedient goal of “making corruption costly” through methods that guarantee the constitutionally catastrophic outcome of making justice impossible. The evidence suggests Kissi Agyebeng is not fighting corruption so much as pursuing an agenda whose full dimensions only time will reveal
J. A. Sarbah
