Special Prosecutor: Appointments Committee recommends approval of Agyebeng

The Appointments Committee of Parliament has recommended for approval the nomination of Mr Kissi Adjebeng as Special Prosecutor.

The Chairman of the Appointments Committee, Mr Joseph Osei Owusu SAID: "...The Committee unanimously agreed to recommend him to the house for approval".

Parliament will in the coming days debate the report of the committee before deciding whether Mr Agyebeng would be approved or not.

Mr Agyebeng has been a law lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ghana Legon since October 2006, teaching and researching Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Corporate Law, and Legal Research and Writing.

Called to the Bar in October 2003 and also engaged in private law practice, Mr Kissi Agyebeng holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of Ghana and Master of Laws (LLM) degree from Dalhouse University and Cornell Law School.

He was born on July 2, 1978, and was awarded the Bentsi-Enchill prize for Best Graduating Student of the University of Ghana School of Law in 2001 and E.N. Sowah Memorial prize for best student in Family Law at the Ghana School of Law and has participated in several international arbitration hearings.

The President’s nominee has consulted for public sector institutions, including the Attorney General’s Department, Exim Bank Ghana Ltd., Youth Employment Authority, National Lottery Authority, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Trade Fair Company Limited, and the Ghana Olympic Committee.

Mr Agyebeng is also an Associate at the African Centre for Cyber Law and Cyber Crime Prevention, and the National Moot Court Co-ordinator for the Commonwealth Moot Court Competition on International Criminal Justice and also the Vice-Chairperson of the Appeals Committee of the Ghana Football Association.

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President forwards Agyebeng’s nomination to Parliament

A Managing Partner of Cromwell Gray LLP, a reputable law firm in Accra, the legal practitioner is the Chairman of the Electronic Communications Tribunal taking over from Justice Samuel Kofi Date-Bah who resigned from the Tribunal on July 1, 2019.

He has argued numerous cases before the Superior Court of Ghana and has also been engaged in several international business transactions in addition to overseeing the affairs and adjudication of appeals at the Electronic Communications Tribunal as stipulated in the Tribunal’s Act 775 of 2008.

The Special Prosecutor nominee during the over four-hour-long session responded to myriads of questions from members of the Committee with National Democratic Congress Minority members under the command of the Caucus’ Leader, Haruna Iddrisu and Minority Chief Whip Alhaji Muntaka Mubarak asking the most questions.

The former Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu had criticised the nomination of Kissi Adjabeng and said the 43-year-old lawyer is a surrogate of Africa Legal Associates, a firm founded by the President’s cousin, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, who, according to him, played various roles in the botched Agyapa Royalty deal.

The nominee refuted these claims that he was a surrogate for the law firm involved in the controversial Agyapa deal saying all those making such claims are uninformed reinforcing that those who know him would never make such allegations and added he took all these allegations that came up as coming from uninformed positions.

The 43-year-old nominee responding to questions from the Committee further indicated making corruption a costly venture by counting on his experience, training and competence to manage the Office and revealed he has developed strategies to fight corruption, conflict of interest and others if approved.

In comparison with Martin Amidu, he said he will draw on his own experience to lead the Office and will rather prefer to wear his own shoes in the sense that he is his own man, going to the Office with his own experiences and professional training, conscience and learning of the law as his strategy.

He underscored the fact that he is not naïve to say he is going to stop the Herculean task of corruption at the Office of the Special Prosecutor since, according to him, God himself will not even acclaim to that, but is going to make corruption very costly to engage in.

Acknowledging that the mission of combating the corruption practice will be difficult, Kissi Agyebeng expressed his commitment to asking what he termed, the tough questions and hold public officers accountable to save the country’s purse.

However, he was quick to add that he is going to make corruption very costly and submitted to institute, what he called, pressure for progress, in which quest there is going to be a systemic review of all public agencies and the development of integrity plans.

He confidently assured the Committee his intention to set up a public corruption perception index to rank public sector agencies against each other, a move which he said will help fish out institutions performing well and those that are not doing well in terms of corruption.