The Director of the Strategy, Research & Communication Division at the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) Samuel Appiah Darko has revealed that the OSP has made 7 complete convictions so far.
According to him, the perception that the office is not working or has not made any convictions is false.
Speaking on Joy News and monitored by NewsDesksGH on December 15, Sammy Darko commended the office for its work.
“So far the OSP has done remarkably well if you look at how young it is.
He noted that although people look at the performance of the OSP from 2018 when it was set up, they had major problems in its earlier days.
“The first Special Prosecutor did not complete his tenure and the office was left without a leader for almost a year and a half and it almost died.”
He added that when the current SP Kissi Agyebeng took over in August 2021, he had to completely rebuild the office.
“What people do not know is that we have been building this office from scratch. Apart from the empty building that was donated to the office, the office had to be built from scratch.”
He said this rebuilding included developing the divisions of office, employing people, putting necessary infrastructure in place, among other things, which lasted until 2023.
“So far we’ve had 7 convictions. People have asked that the OSP has not been able to even prosecute and jail an ant but that is not accurate,”
“These convictions, people have asked who are they, where are they. They are Ghanaians who were engaged in serious offences.”
Sammy Darko noted that 6 of the convictions had to do with the case of the National Service Authority and the ‘ghost names’ that were in the NSA payroll.
“This one had to do with the ghost names where we were losing almost 34 million Ghana cedis every year just in the Northern Region alone.”
“We also have one more conviction that had to do with galamsey,” he added.
He then noted that the OSP also has 33 persons currently standing trial including former Finance Minister Kenneth Ofori-Atta and former National Petroleum Authority CEO Mustapha Abdul-Hamid.
