An Accra High Court has temporarily lifted bail conditions imposed on a sitting Member of Parliament (MP) facing criminal charges alongside former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, granting him permission to travel to London for a parliamentary training programme despite objections from the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP).
The ruling was delivered on Thursday, May 7, 2026, following an application by Col. (Rtd.) Kwadwo Damoah, MP for Jaman South and the sixth accused in the case, seeking leave to travel between May 11 and 15, 2026. The Court ordered him to depart Ghana on May 9 and return no later than May 17, 2026.
The decision required the Court to suspend, at least temporarily, bail conditions that had been explicitly designed to prevent Damoah from leaving the country. Those conditions, imposed at the time of his arraignment in December 2025, included the deposit of his passport and all travel documents at the court registry, placement on the Ghana Immigration Service stop list at all ports of entry, and a weekly reporting obligation to the lead investigator.
The OSP resisted the application on two grounds. First, it argued that the letter supporting the travel request had come from the Minority Caucus in Parliament rather than from Parliament as an institution, and that a communication from the Speaker of Parliament would have carried the appropriate institutional authority to validate the official nature of the trip. Second, the prosecution questioned why Damoah, who is on trial, was selected for the programme when another member of the Minority Caucus not facing criminal proceedings could have attended in his place.
The Court acknowledged those concerns were not without merit but found them insufficient to override the applicant’s right to travel. The decisive threshold, the Court held, was whether there was evidence that Damoah would abscond if permitted to leave. Finding none, the Court exercised its discretion in his favour.
The eight accused in the case are Ken Ofori-Atta, Ernest Darko Akore, Emmanuel Kofi Nti, Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, Isaac Crentsil, Kwadwo Damoah, Evans Adusei, and Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML). The prosecution alleges the group caused the Ghanaian state a loss exceeding GH₵1.4 billion through an unlawful revenue assurance contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and SML.
The broader case has been adjourned to May 26, 2026, following fresh legal developments at the High Court’s General Jurisdiction Division and the Supreme Court of Ghana, relating to the prosecutorial powers of the OSP. Ofori-Atta himself remains outside Ghana, with extradition proceedings ongoing in the United States.
