3rd June 2025 9:09:38 AM
2 mins readThe Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) is expected to file criminal charges against some former high-ranking officials of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) after discovering an alleged corrupt scheme involving over GH¢280 million.
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The alleged corrupt dealings are said to have occurred between 2022 and 2024.
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The Special Prosecutor, speaking in an interview yesterday, Monday, June 2, made these revelations.
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This development comes just three months after Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng, in February, announced that his office had launched an investigation into the dealings of the former Chief Executive of the NPA, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid.
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The investigation concerns his alleged involvement in the embezzlement of GH₵1.3 billion from the Unified Petroleum Pricing Fund (UPPF).
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The investigation into the scheme targets four individuals, i.e., the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) from 2021 to early 2024, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, alongside three other NPA officials: UPPF Coordinator, Jacob Amuah, NPA staff Freda Tandoh, and NPA staff, Wendy Ashong Newman.
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Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng stated that criminal charges would be filed against four high-ranking officials of the NPA, although he did not reveal their names.
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He added that the OSP had launched investigations into suspected corruption and related offences involving the operations of the National Petroleum Authority and the conduct of some of its officials.
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Following investigations, it has been uncovered that between 2022 and 2024, some high-ranking and other officials of the NPA engineered a corrupt scheme to exploit their positions for personal gain.
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They used threats, intimidation, coercion, bribery, and excessive regulatory pressure to extract large sums of money from oil marketing companies and other entities under their regulatory and oversight authority in the petroleum downstream sector.
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He continued that by May 30, 2025, the OSP had traced and uncovered an amount of GH¢280,516,127.19 as proceeds from the corrupt scheme.
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According to the OSP, some of this money was used by those involved to acquire apartments, suites, and houses both in Ghana and abroad, as well as 22 fuel haulage trucks and oil marketing companies—allowing them to compete with the very companies they were supposed to regulate.
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He said the OSP, before the end of June, would file criminal charges against the first batch of the perpetrators and complicit oil marketing companies and their officials.
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He said upon filing, "we would brief you [public] in detail in respect of who did what, who acquired what, and what has been recovered.
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