Accra: The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice has revealed that GH?548,333,542.65 has been lost to the state through the activities of top-level executives of the National Service Authority (NSA) and their accomplices in a fraudulent scheme. This substantial loss, incurred over several years, involved the creation of ghost names within the NSA payroll system.
According to Ghana News Agency, the State lost GH?25,857,836.16 in 2018/2019; GH?21,613,962.24 in 2019/2020; GH?55,670,584.32 in 2020/2021; GH?61,383,025.74 in 2021/2022; GH?350,926,977.12 in 2022/2023; and GH?32,881,157.07 in 2023/2024. Attorney-General Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine disclosed these figures while updating the media on Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL). He stated that the alleged crime involved some directors and staff of the NSA who collaborated with vendors and other accomplices.
In February 2022, the NSA management introduced a digitalization system, claiming it saved the country GH?112 million. The system, utilizing an app called the Metric App, allegedly blocked the enrolment of 14,027 potential fraudsters during the 2021-2022 service year. However, the Minister of Finance, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, later ordered a headcount of all national service personnel as a prerequisite for disbursing arrears of allowances dating back to August 2024, which led to the discovery of 81,885 ghost names.
Dr. Ayine praised the Fourth Estate for their foundational work, which facilitated the investigation. He revealed that before each new service year, directors would submit inflated budget figures to Parliament, which were later used to request excess funds from the Minister of Finance. Once authorized, these funds were transferred to the NSA's project account at the Agricultural Development Bank and diverted into private pockets under the guise of project execution.
Ghost names were also deployed onto the NSA system, with directors requesting payments through the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GHIPSS). These payments included those made to E-zwich cards for non-existent personnel. Investigations compared verified personnel data with GHIPSS payment records over six years, revealing that 63,672 ghost names were paid allowances.
The investigations also uncovered that some ghost names were added to lists submitted by vendors who supplied items or loan facilities to service personnel. Upon receiving payments, vendors were contacted by directors and staff to return the additional funds. Suspects Gaisie, Nyarko, and Oteng, for example, collected funds and handed them to suspect Osei Assibey Antwi.
A detailed plan by director Gifty Oware-Mensah involved using National Service Personnel allowances as collateral to secure a GH?30,698,218.69 loan from the Agricultural Development Bank at a 23% interest rate. Oware-Mensah registered a company, Blocks of Life Consult, using others' information without consent, and involved her husband, Peter Mensah, as a director. The company, which was not a registered vendor with the NSA, allegedly misappropriated funds using 9,934 ghost names over two service years.
The investigation revealed that funds transferred to Blocks of Life Consult were subsequently moved into four accounts: AMEACOM, Scafold, OTCHEY, and Aristo Logistics and Trading. Oware-Mensah was a director of AMEACOM and Scaffold Company Limited, linked to Abraham Gaisie. Between March 2023 and May 2024, substantial funds were transferred to these accounts, with GH?22,925,518.69 to AMEACOM, GH?1,000,000 to Scafold, GH?1,572,700 to OTCHEY, and GH?5,200,000 to Aristo Logistics and Trading.
