Frank Davies flags high evidentiary burden on OSP over Ofori-Atta's 78 corruption counts

Legal counsel for former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, Mr Frank Davies, has signalled that the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s (OSP) expansive 78-count filing was anticipated and, in his view, structurally difficult for the prosecution to sustain at trial.

In an interview with JoyNews on Top Story, Mr Davies reframed the development as procedurally expected rather than alarming.

He underscored the granular evidentiary standard required in criminal litigation, stressing that the OSP’s burden is count-specific and non-transferable:

According to Mr Davies, the numerical scale of the indictment transforms the case into a high-complexity, high-resource prosecution, placing significant pressure on the OSP’s investigative precision, documentation quality, and courtroom execution strategy.

The OSP has filed 78 charges against Mr Ofori-Atta, Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Ltd (SML), and six senior former public officials following a multi-year investigation into alleged procurement breaches, false representations, and payments for unverified services.

Ernest Darko Akore (67) – Chief de Cabinet to the Minister of Finance

Emmanuel Kofi Nti (66) – Former Commissioner-General, GRA

Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah (64) – Former Commissioner-General, GRA

Isaac Crentsil (63) – Former Commissioner, Customs Division

Kwadwo Damoah (65) – Former Commissioner, Customs Division

Evans Adusei (62) – CEO and beneficial owner of SML

Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Ltd (SML) – Corporate defendant

The OSP characterises the alleged conduct as a multi-year scheme that enabled irregular single-source contracting and substantial state expenditures without corresponding service validation.

The prosecutorial trajectory sets the stage for what could become one of the most consequential governance and procurement cases in Ghana’s Fourth Republic.