Ghana’s Cabinet has approved the reintroduction of special tribunals to fast-track corruption and illicit wealth cases, the government announced this week, responding directly to criticism that the country’s courts are too slow to deliver timely accountability under the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) initiative.
Government Communications Minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu confirmed that Cabinet endorsed the tribunal mechanism on the constitutional basis that such courts are already provided for under Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, and that they will now be formally activated to handle ORAL cases and other illicit wealth proceedings. He said the tribunals are intended to reduce the pressure of corruption-related cases on the regular court system. No date has been given for when the first tribunal will sit.
The announcement came on the same day former Auditor-General Daniel Domelevo renewed his call for specialised courts with defined timelines for corruption trials, arguing that the current justice framework is structurally inadequate for the scale and complexity of financial crimes being uncovered.
“Cabinet has approved the reintroduction of the tribunal system, which, in any event, is in the Constitution. It is something that has been resuscitated, and very soon it will be rolled out to deal with cases of ORAL and cases involving illegal money,” Kwakye Ofosu said on Joy News’ PM Express.
In a separate disclosure on the same programme, Kwakye Ofosu said former Health Minister Kwame Agyeman-Manu is facing imminent prosecution and denied the former minister’s recent public suggestion that ORAL investigators had not engaged him.
“He was arrested by the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB). He was interrogated. He wrote a caution statement. The docket on him has been built, two of them. And he will be taken to court very soon and charged,” Kwakye Ofosu said, adding that Agyeman-Manu “is by no means a free man.”
The charges under consideration relate to causing financial loss to the state and breaches of procurement law, spanning two separate cases: the controversial Sputnik-V COVID-19 vaccine procurement deal, and the management of Ghana’s pandemic border screening programme at Kotoka International Airport, where Frontiers Health Service Limited operated without a licence.
The Agyeman-Manu disclosure is among the most specific prosecutorial warnings the government has issued under ORAL to date. Kwakye Ofosu said approximately 140 individuals have so far been questioned by security agencies including the NIB, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), resulting in 27 active dockets and a further 40 cases being reviewed by EOCO, with multiple individuals currently standing trial.
The minister maintained that the government will not seek to influence judicial proceedings once cases are filed, saying the pace of trials remains the exclusive domain of the courts.
