West Africa Desk | Corruption Watch
On Wednesday, Ghana's Supreme Court decides whether the country's corruption-fighter-in-chief is allowed to exist in his current form. The court has set 29 July for judgment on whether the Office of the Special Prosecutor's independent power to prosecute is constitutional, and everything about Ghana's anti-corruption drive, including a fresh $28 million case, is downstream of the answer.
The challenge was brought by a private citizen, lawyer Noah Ephraem Tetteh Adamtey, and its argument is constitutional bedrock: that Articles 88(3) and 88(4) of the 1992 Constitution vest prosecutorial authority solely in the Attorney-General, and that Parliament exceeded its mandate when the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act 2017 handed an independent body powers to investigate and prosecute on its own authority. If the court agrees, the OSP's live prosecutions would fall back toward the Attorney-General's office, and Parliament would face rebuilding its anti-corruption architecture from the foundations.
The stakes are not hypothetical. This month the OSP charged the former chief executive of the National Petroleum Authority, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, and six others over an alleged extortion and money-laundering scheme it values at more than 280 million cedis, about $28 million, the flagship case of President Mahama's intensified anti-corruption campaign. The case is at an early stage and the defendants are presumed innocent. And the atmosphere around the office is its own story: Ghana's Interior Ministry has ordered a probe into an alleged assassination attempt on the Special Prosecutor himself, per the ministry's official statement.
Why this desk watches: Ghana is spending 2026 courting its diaspora, with an investment summit in London and the Ghana House project launched ahead of the Commonwealth Games. Every one of those invitations rests on confidence that the referee is real. On Wednesday the Supreme Court says whether he is, and this desk will report the judgment when it lands.
Every allegation on this desk is attributed to a court record, an official agency statement or named reporting, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless convicted.
