30.7 C
Los Angeles
Thursday, October 30, 2025

Mahama ready to assent to anti LGBTQ+ bill if passed – Majority leader

Mahama Ayariga, the Majority Leader in Parliament,...

“Come prepared to earn the approval of the House” – Afenyo-Markin tells Acting CJ

Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin has cautioned the...

NSS Scandal – Gifty Oware-Mensah charged for stealing GH¢38.4m

NewsNSS Scandal - Gifty Oware-Mensah charged for stealing GH¢38.4m

Gifty Oware-Mensah, controversial immediate past Deputy Executive Director of the National Service Authority (NSA), has been charged with causing GH¢38.4 million in alleged theft to the state.

The Former Deputy Executive Director of the NSA was arraigned before the High Court in Accra on multiple charges.

Her charges include “Stealing GH¢31,502,091.40 belonging to the National Service Authority. Willfully causing financial loss to the state through the fake hire-purchase arrangement, Abuse of public office for personal gain and Money laundering through the transfer of funds into personal and affiliated accounts”.

The Attorney-General’s Department alleged Gifty Oware-Mensah misappropriated a total of GH¢38,458,248.87 between February 2022 and March 2024, overseeing finance, audit, and procurement at the NSA.

According to prosecutors, she dishonestly transferred GH¢31.5 million from a loan facility meant to support National Service Personnel into her private company accounts.

The said money was under the pretext of supplying goods on a hire-purchase basis; however, investigation revealed no such goods were supplied, and the names used to secure the loan were ghost names from the NSA’s internal system.

It will be recalled that Dr Dominic Ayine, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, has stated that twelve suspects will be charged in the National Service scandal.

According to the Attorney General, former Executive Director of the National Service Scheme, Mustapha Ussif, former Executive Director of the National Service Authority (NSA), Osei Assibey Antwi and former Deputy Director in charge of Finance and Administration, Gifty Oware-Mensah.

He revealed that the former National Service Authority (NSA) ran a criminal enterprise which siphoned huge sums of public funds, including over GHC548 million.

The Attorney General later revealed that eight suspects had approached him for plea negotiations.

The A-G revealed that suspects demanding a plea negotiation include some officials offering to testify against their colleagues.

Speaking during a press briefing at the Government Accountability Series on Monday, July 28, 2025, Dr. Ayine explained, “The National Service Authority scandal case was due to be filed last week when we stumbled upon further evidence of malfeasance involving an account at the Bank of Ghana, to which had been transferred an amount of One Hundred and Eighty-Nine Million Ghana Cedis (Ghs 189,000,000.00).

Out of this amount, Eighty Million Ghana Cedis cannot be traced, but we found two cheques bearing the name and account details of the former Director General, Mr. Osei Assibey, which had been used to withdraw funds totalling a little under Two Million Ghana Cedis (Ghs 2m) from the said account”.

He added, “We have therefore halted the filing of charges so as to await the receipt of the evidence from the relevant state agencies, including the Bank of Ghana, Ministry of Finance and the Controller and Accountant General”.

See the charges below:

Check out our other content

Check out other tags:

Most Popular Articles