Dr Dominic Ayine, the Attorney General and Minister for Justice, has finally revealed his long-awaited, teased scandal he labelled as a ‘Rumble in the Jungle’.
Speaking to the press briefing on Wednesday, October 22, 2025, Dr Dominic Ayine, “Now to the Buffer Stock investigations, which I nicknamed “The Rumble in the Jungle.” As of March 20, 2025, when we announced the arrest and detention of suspects Kwabena Adu Boahene and his wife Angela Boateng, the Economic and Organised Crime Office had gathered credible intelligence regarding a criminal enterprise that had been operated by the former Chief Executive Officer of the National Food and Buffer Stock Company Limited, Mr Hanan Abdul-Wahab.
Initial estimates put the amount of money pilfered by Mr Abdul-Wahab and his collaborators at the time at around Fifty-Eight Million Ghana Cedis (Ghs58,000,000.00), far in excess of the Forty-Nine Million Ghana Cedis (Ghs49,000,000.00) suspected to have been stolen by Mr. Kwabena Adu Boahene and his co-accused persons”.
I called the criminal enterprise operated by Mr. Abdul-Wahab and his collaborators at the Buffer Stock “the Rumble in the Jungle” not only because of the huge amount of money at stake but because of the fact that, while food suppliers were wailing and gnashing their teeth due to failure to pay them for supplies to the Buffer Stock, and while our school kids were being denied nutrition under the School Feeding Program for lack of funds, Mr. Abdul-Wahab and his collaborators were busy lawlessly looting funds meant for the Program. That is jungle behaviour. The informal meaning of the word “rumble” is to discover an illicit activity or its perpetrator. Through painstaking investigations, the EOCO discovered this illicit, criminal enterprise run by a gang of corrupt, lawless officials at the Buffer Stock Company.
Summary of the Findings
On June 25, 2025, the EOCO conducted a coordinated operation based upon their initial investigations, which resulted in the arrest of Mr Abdul-Wahab, former Cehief Executive of the National Food and Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), his wife Faiza Seidu Wuni and James Atieku, the Buffer Stock manager for the Northern Sector who was based in Tamale. The operation also led to the arrest of Emmanuel Arthur, Head of Corporate Affairs of NAFCO.
The arrest followed Initial intelligence and assessment by EOCO which suggested that while serving as CEO of Buffer Stock between 2017 and 2024, Mr. Hanan Abdul-Wahab colluded with his wife, Faiza Seidu Wuni, Richard Sam Asante (Head of Finance), Bismark Owusu Boakye (Finance Department), and Emmanuel Arthur (Corporate Affairs Manager) and others to, to create an elaborate criminal enterprise that was used to steal and launder public funds from the Buffer Stock Company.
Within the period between 2017 and 2024, Hanan Abdul-Wahab, in concert with Richard Sam-Asante and Bismark Owusu Bokaye, orchestrated the transfer of seven Eight Million Two Hundred And Sixty Nine Thousand, Eighty Four and Four Pesewas and Four Ghana Cedis (78, 269,084.04) from the bank accounts of Buffer Stock Company to a private company linked to Hanan Abdul-Wahab, his wife and staff of buffer stock Company at Republic Bank and ECOBANK.
Evidence shows that the funds were instantly retransferred to companies owned by Hanan Abdul-Wahab himself and companies and entities owned and associated with and Hanan and his.
Similarly, Evidence shows that between December 2017 and May 2019, Hanan Abdul-Wahab transferred Five Million, Four Hundred And Ninety Five thousand, Seven And Forty Eight Ghana Cedis and Thirty Six Pesewas (GHC 5, 495,748.36 ) from Buffer Stock accounts to two bank accounts belonging to Aludiba Enterprise at Republic Bank and ABSA, a company he owns. Aludiba Enterprise is not a registered supplier of Buffer Stock Company.
Hanan Abdul-Whab, between October 2019 to January 2022, also orchestrated some suppliers to transfer an amount of Eleven Million Nine Hundred And Ninety Eight thousand Ghana Cedis and forty-eight pesewas (GHC 11,998,830.48) to an entity owned by a staff of the buffer stock and later instructed the staff to re-transfer the funds to a company owned and run by Hanan Abdul Whab and his wife.
In July 2022, investigations found that Hanan Abdul Wahab transferred GHC 251,050 from Buffer Stock Accounts to a bank account at Republic Bank belonging to Energy Partners Ltd, a company co-owned by the Hannan Abdul Wahab and Emmanuel Arthur, the head of Corporate Affairs of Buffer Stock company. Energy Partners is not a service provider for Buffer stock. Yet another company. The evidence gathered so far shows that they run this criminal enterprise under the pretext of supplying food items to schools under the School Feeding Program.
Seven entities linked to Mr. Hanan Abdul-Wahab and his wife were used as vehicles to receive and to launder the proceeds of crime from Buffer Stock. The money laundering took the form of property acquisitions across the country, including real estate and luxury goods using the same entities.
The entities in question are as follows:
Alqarni Enterprise
Aludiba Enterprise
Energy Partners Limited
Fa-Hausa Ventures
Fa-Hausa Company Limited and
Aludiba Foundation and
Sawtina Enterprise (owned by a third party connected to the couple)
Bank documents obtained by the EOCO reveal that, within the period that the suspects operated the criminal enterprise, Mr Hanan Abdul-Wahab, his wife and their entities became the largest depositors of Republic Bank.
Investigations established that in 2018, Sawtina Enterprise, an entity owned by James Atieku-Apawu, applied to become a licensed supplier to the Buffer Stock Company. This application was approved by his boss, Hanan Abdul-Wahab, knowing very well that his approval placed James Tieku-Apawu in a conflict-of-interest situation.
Documentary evidence from bank accounts of Buffer Stock revealed that between September 2018 and June 2024, Buffer Stock transferred a total of Ghs78,269,082.04 to Sawtina Enterprise’s bank accounts at Ecobank and Republic Bank, respectively. The payments were supposedly to pay for food supplies made by Sawtina Enterprise to schools under the School Feeding Program (SFP).
Verified records, including waybills and store receipt vouchers (SRVs) from Buffer Stock, indicated that only Ghs 27,389,872.00 out of payments to Sawtina Enterprise were backed by supplies. There is no evidence that the remaining Ghs50,879,210.04 paid to the enterprise was backed by food supplies or any service rendered to Buffer Stock.
A review of Sawtina Enterprise’s bank account revealed that the bulk of the payments which Buffer Stock made to Sawtina Enterprise’s bank accounts (about 98%) of the Ghs 78,269,082.04 were instantly re-transferred to Alqarni Enterprise, Fa-Hausa Ventures and other entities owned and controlled by or affiliated to Hanan Abdul-Wahab and Faiza Seidu Wuni.
He further explained that whenever such payments were deposited into Sawtina’s account, he was prompted by Hanan to expect the transfer and was later instructed on where to move or retransfer the funds. In effect, Sawtina became a conduit for Hanan Abdul-Wahab and his wife to steal Buffer Stock funds without easy detection.
Transaction analysis of Sawtina Enterprise’s Republic bank account and entities used as vehicles to launder the proceeds of the criminal enterprise established by Hanan and his Wife Faiza corroborated the claims made by Mr. James Tieku-Apawu. For example, a review of some of the re-transfers of the funds paid to Sawtina Enterprise by Buffer Stock revealed the following:
Entity Name Amount
Sawtina Enterprise to Hanan Abdul-Wahab GH₵ 16,179,137.25
Sawtina Enterprise to Alqarni Enterprise GH₵ 23,913,964.90
Sawtina Enterprise to Fa-Hausa Ventures GH₵500,000.00
Sawtina Enterprise to Chain Homes Ghana Ltd GH₵550,000.00
TOTAL: GHC 40,493,102.15
Under interrogation, Mr Atieku-Apawu stated that, although some of the funds received into Sawtina’s Ecobank and Republic Bank accounts were for the few genuine supplies backed by waybills and Store Receipt Vouchers (SRV’s), in most instances no supplies were made, but he noticed that Buffer Stock kept making payments to his company, Sawtina Enterprise.
He also admitted that other third-party companies, which our investigations have established to be Licensed Buying Companies (LBC’s) or suppliers to Buffer Stock, also made several payments into Sawtina’s account. He said he neither knew the promoters of these companies nor did his company have any business dealings with them. He had no explanation as to why the millions were transferred into his company’s bank account but observed that those payments, whether from Buffer Stock or from third parties, were made into Sawtina’s account on the instruction of his then boss Hanan Abdul-Wahab”.
