Adu Boahen Case: AG urges apex Supreme Court to review ruling on disclosure

The Supreme Court has fixed 14 January 2026 to decide whether to revisit aspects of its own ruling on criminal disclosures in the case involving former National Signals Bureau boss Kwabena Adu Boahen and his wife.

The couple are currently on trial on charges of stealing, money laundering and using public office for private gain.

They had earlier applied to the Supreme Court to bar the High Court judge handling their criminal trial, but that bid was dismissed. In the same matter, the Supreme Court also revised the Practice Direction on Further Disclosures, holding that prosecutors are required to disclose only materials in their possession that are connected to the case, rather than all materials described as “relevant”.

It is this aspect of the ruling that has prompted the Deputy Attorney-General, Dr Justice Srem-Sai, to invoke the Court’s review jurisdiction.

He argues that by effectively removing the word “relevance” from the Practice Direction without inserting an equivalent standard, the ordinary bench has, in practical terms, re-written the disclosure framework. In his view, this could lead to an overly narrow focus on mere possession of documents, without any test as to whether requested materials have a genuine bearing on the issues being tried.

Dr Srem-Sai has therefore asked the Supreme Court to either restore the word “relevance” in its ordinary, non-technical sense, or to substitute it with wording such as “connected with the matter before the Court”.

He maintains that the criminal disclosure regime must preserve a clear nexus requirement between the materials sought and the case itself, and has urged the Court to clarify this when it delivers its decision in January.