Former Executive Director of the National Service Authority (NSA), Mr. Osei Assibey Antwi, and his Deputy, Gifty Oware-Mensah, are expected to be arraigned before the High Court today, Friday, 17 October 2025, for the first hearing since the State charged the two for various offences they are alleged to have committed while serving in office.
The state filed the charge sheets at the registry of the Criminal High Court on Monday, 13 October 2025. Gifty Oware-Mensah’s case is numbered CR/0018/2026, and Mr Osei Assibey Antwi’s case is numbered CR/0019/2026. It is not clear if the two will be arraigned before the same court or separate courts. It is, however, safe to project that they may be arraigned before two different courts.
According to the charge sheet, Mr Assibey Antwi has been charged with 14 counts, including causing financial loss to the Republic, stealing, and money laundering. Ms Oware-Mensah, on the other hand, has been charged with five counts. The offences are Stealing, willfully causing financial loss to the Republic, using public office for profit, and money laundering.
The brief facts attached to the charge sheet of Ms Gifty Oware-Mensah indicated as follows: “The accused person, Gifty Oware-Mensah, is a Former Deputy Executive Director of the National Service Authority N.S.A).
“The National Service Authority is an establishment under the Ministry of Education mandated to mobilize and deploy personnel drawn primarily from the tertiary institutions in Ghana to various sectors in the Regions, qualified to undertake national service in areas of national priority for national development under the Ghana National Service Authority Act,2024 (Act 1119).
“The NSA established the “marketplace” to alleviate the financial burden on National Service Personnel (NSP) posted to a variety of sectors, granting them the authority to purchase products. This online platform allows NSP to apply for loans and hire purchase.
“Consequently, the NSA registered a limited number of entities as merchants/Vendor/s on the platform to offer these services to the NSP. The vendor/s who rendered the services are paid by monthly deductions from the National Service Personnel’s allowance at source, until the items purchased or loan amount received by the NSP are completely paid for.
“As the Deputy Executive Director, the accused person was responsible for the oversight of the Finance, Audit, and Procurement Departments. She was solely responsible for the approval of merchants onto the NSA “marketplace,” in addition to overseeing the general administration of the NSA.
“Sometime in February 2025, the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), upon receiving intelligence, initiated investigations into alleged acts of ghost names, stealing, corruption, and money laundering by certain NSA staff.
“The investigation revealed that, between February 2022 and March 2024, the accused approached officials of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) and informed them that the NSA had signed an agreement with her company, Blocks of Life Consult (BLC), to sell products on hire-purchase to National Service Personnel (NSP). She claimed that she required a loan of GHc 78,139,910.00 to support her business.
“Blocks of Life Consult Limited is a private limited company registered in 2016 and owned by Paul Boateng. The accused, to facilitate her criminal activities, took control of the company through one Mohammed and made George Annan, her mother’s driver, one of the company’s directors.
“The accused, in a letter dated October 14, 2022, addressed to the head of the Consumer Finance Department at ADB, submitted a list of approximately 9,934 ghost names that she generated from the NSA Central Management System (CMS).
“She represented to the Bank that she had supplied goods on hire-purchase to the 9,934 ghost names and wanted to use their allowances as collateral for the facility.
“ADB told the accused that they could not approve the loan of GHc 78,139,910.00 as it would mean they would be deducting the full allowances of the supposed NSP.
“The accused later agreed with the bank on the Principal sum of GHc 31,502,091.40 and an interest of GHc 6,956,157.47 to be paid through source deductions of the 9,934 NSP allowance over 11 months.
“On February 20, 2023, and March 5, 2024, two distinct agreements were executed between ADB and NSA on this facility engineered by the accused.
“In accordance with the agreements, an escrow account was established with ADB to retain the loan on behalf of the NSA. The account was designated as NSA HIRE PURCHASE and had the account number 122IMPL230610001.
“The loan amount of GHc 31,502,091.40 was disbursed into the NSA HIRE PURCHASE account, and on the accused’s instructions to the bank, the loan amount was subsequently transferred into Blocks of Life Consult, her company’s account numbered 1081010161216501.
“Out of the money received, the accused transferred GHC 22,925,518.69 to Amaecom Global Company, of which she was a director, and the remaining amount to three other companies.
“Investigations revealed that the accused person did not supply any products on hire-purchase to any NSP, and that the 9,934 names she gave to ADB and GHIPPS were ghost names she generated from the NSA CMS.
“Based on the above facts, the accused person has been charged and arraigned before this court for trial. Through her actions, the accused caused a total of GHC 38,458,248.87 loss to the Republic.”
The court documents on the part of Mr Assibey Antwi reveal among others that the NSA between August 2021 and February 2025, “willfully caused financial loss of Five Hundred Million, Eight Hundred and Sixty-One Thousand, Seven Hundred and Forty-Four Ghana Cedis and Two Pesewas (GHÇ500,861,744.02) belonging to the National Service Authority by authorizing payments of allowances to in excess of 60,000 non-existent (ghost) national service personnel.”
