Gifty Oware-Mensah Used NSS Allowances to Secure GH₵30 Million ADB Loan – Attorney General – GhArticles.com
Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Dr. Dominic Ayine, has uncovered what he describes as a complex fraud operation allegedly led by former Deputy Executive Director of the National Service Authority (NSA), Gifty Oware-Mensah. The scheme reportedly involved the use of ghost names and NSS allowances to secure a GH₵30 million loan from ADB Bank.
Speaking during a press briefing in Accra on Friday, June 13, as part of the government’s anti-corruption campaign, Operation Recover All Loots (ORAL), Dr. Ayine stated that investigations have been completed and legal proceedings are set to begin.
According to the Attorney General, several fictitious names were deliberately inserted into the National Service payroll submitted to vendors. These ghost names inflated the vendor lists, leading to excessive payments.
“When these vendors eventually received the inflated payments, officials from the NSS would meet with them to retrieve the surplus amounts,” Dr. Ayine explained.
He noted that in some cases, suspects including Gaise Nyarko and Oteng collected the extra funds and either handed the cash to former NSA Director-General Osei Asibey Antwi or deposited it into his bank account.
A central figure in the scheme, Gifty Oware-Mensah, allegedly devised a plan to use the fraudulent NSS payroll to obtain a GH₵30,698,218.69 loan from ADB Bank at a 23 percent interest rate. Dr. Ayine said she fraudulently registered a company called Blocks of Life Consult using the identities of individuals without their consent.
She then introduced the company to ADB through Akwasi Ofori Mintah and listed her husband, Mr. Peter Mensah, a lawyer, as a company director.
Dr. Ayine explained that Oware-Mensah claimed the company specialised in supplying household appliances to National Service personnel and proposed that the loan would be repaid through salary deductions managed by the NSS.
However, he pointed out that Blocks of Life Consult was never registered as an official vendor on the NSS marketplace.
Further investigations revealed that over a span of two service years, Oware-Mensah allegedly used 9,934 ghost names to siphon public funds. The loan from ADB was reportedly transferred to the company’s account and then distributed into four separate company accounts.