Kissi Agyebeng
The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has agreed to use one of the seven individuals accused of extorting more than GH¢291 million in the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) case as a prosecution witness.
This was after the accused, Albert Ankrah, a Director and shareholder of Propnest Limited, approached the Office to cut a deal, claiming he had been misled into certain acts.
Adelaide Kobiri-Woode, a Principal Prosecutor at the OSP, told the trial court yesterday that the Office has since taken a decision not to prosecute Albert Ankrah “but rather put Albert Ankrah before the court as a witness.”
The change in the status of Ankrah resulted in the court’s inability to conduct the scheduled case management conference, as the OSP said it would have to amend and file a new charge sheet to reflect only the remaining accused persons and companies.
Joseph Dindiok Kpemka, counsel for Dr. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, was not impressed about the latest development, pointing out that it has been nine months since the accused persons were first arraigned and nothing has happened since.
He added that the prosecution has changed the charge sheet three times, noting that the defence cannot tutor the OSP but the court must take notice of the development and previous orders made on the OSP.
The case was adjourned to March 24 for continuation.
Accusations
The OSP has charged Dr. Abdul-Hamid and seven individuals as well as three companies with 54 counts of charges including extortion by a public officer, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering.
The individuals are Jacob Kwamina Amuah, Coordinator of the Unified Petroleum Pricing Fund (UPPF) at NPA; Wendy Newman, a staff of NPA; Albert Ankrah, Isaac Mensah, all Directors of Kel Logistics Limited; Bright Bediako-Mensah, a Director of Kel Logistics Limited and Kings Energy Limited as well as Kwaku Aboagye Acquaah, Director of Kings Energy Limited.
The three companies charged by the OSP are Propnest Limited, Kel Logistics Limited and Kings Energy Limited, while a suspect identified as Osei Tutu Adjei, a Director of Kel Logistics Limited is currently at large.
The OSP says the charges stem from investigations initiated by it in late 2024 into alleged unlawful conduct involving the diversion of public funds and collusion with oil marketing and bulk distribution companies.
The summary of facts indicate that investigations by the OSP show that between 2022 and December 2024, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, Jacob Kwamina Amuah and Wendy Newman under the colour of their office as officers of NPA, set up an extortionate scheme by which they unlawfully obtained GH¢291,574,087.19 and $332,407.47 from bulk oil transporters and oil marketing companies, which they knew they were not lawfully authorised to obtain.
It says the scheme was contrived by Abdul-Hamid, who sold the idea of the alleged criminal adventure to Amuah, who also recruited Newman as the primary conduit for receiving the proceeds of the crime.
The facts claim a total of GH¢24 million was handed directly by Amuah to Abdul-Hamid between January 2024 and December 2024 – “being proceeds of the criminal extortion scheme.”
The brief facts further point out that within the same period, Abdul-Hamid also directly received GH¢230,000 from one oil haulage company.
Of the total amount received by the three, a sum of GH¢227,232,323.58 and $17,207.47 were paid through Newman, who disbursed it at the instruction of Amuah, the facts further alleged.
The investigations further revealed that Ankrah, Mensah, Bediako-Mensah and Acquah together with Osei Tutu Adjei, with the complicity of the accused persons, established and ran Propnest, Kel and Kings Energy “by which they proceeded to unlawfully launder the proceeds of the criminal adventure.”
This, the OSP claims, was done “through various transfers for the acquisition of movable and immovable property for the purpose of concealing or disguising the illicit origin of the proceeds of the criminal enterprise and to evade the legal consequences of the unlawful activity.”
The brief facts added that Amuah and Newman transferred various sums of money directly to three companies and funded the purchase of lands, the construction of houses, the purchase of trucks for oil distribution business, and the construction of fuel filling and service stations “in pursuance of the criminal adventure.”
BY Gibril Abdul Razak