A senior Ghanaian legal academic has argued that the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s failure to obtain prior authorisation from the Attorney General, as required by law, created the procedural vulnerability that a United States immigration court ultimately exploited in granting former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta permanent residency.
Kwaku Ansa-Asare, Dean of the Faculty of Laws at Mountcrest University College and former Director of the Ghana School of Law, made the remarks on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, days after Ofori-Atta’s lawyers confirmed that a US immigration court had granted his Green Card I-485 petition, with the court having considered evidence relating to actions taken by Ghana’s OSP including its earlier decision to declare him a fugitive from justice at a time when he was reportedly receiving medical treatment in the United States.
The court found the criminal charges against the former Finance Minister to be “not credible,” though the ruling was delivered within the context of US immigration proceedings focused on whether Ofori-Atta met the legal requirements for adjustment of status.
Ansa-Asare said the outcome should not have come as a surprise, pointing to what he described as a fundamental procedural misstep by the OSP at the outset of its pursuit of Ofori-Atta.
He cited Article 88, clauses 1, 3 to 6 of the Constitution, arguing that the Attorney General holds primary authority in such matters and that the OSP was required to obtain the AG’s prior approval before taking the actions it did — approval the OSP did not seek.
“If we have done our homework well, we ought to have realised even before we raised the bar that this is not going to work, for the simple reason that the OSP must seek prior approval from the Attorney General — they did not do that,” he said.
Ansa-Asare said the legal question that flows from that failure had already been resolved by the Supreme Court, and that the OSP was left with two options: discontinue the current approach and return to the Attorney General, or allow the AG to step in and act in accordance with the constitutional framework.
His remarks added to a growing body of criticism over the institutional conduct of Ghana’s anti-corruption architecture, with the US immigration ruling seen by legal observers as a significant blow to the OSP’s credibility on the international stage.
The OSP, for its part, has insisted it played no role in the US immigration proceedings and stressed that the credibility of the criminal charges against Ofori-Atta would be determined by courts in Ghana, which have jurisdiction over his guilt or innocence.
The office also maintained that Ofori-Atta remained a Ghanaian citizen subject to extradition if a US extradition court ruled accordingly.
However, a diplomatic standstill has complicated that path. The OSP’s Director of Strategy, Research and Communications, Sammy Darko, confirmed that the US Department of Justice had not yet notified Ghana that it had formally served Ofori-Atta, leaving the prosecution effectively paralysed pending that step.
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