Special Prosecutor's office allocated GH¢180m

The Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) has been allocated GH¢180 million for the 2019 fiscal year.

The money will be used to resource the office to enable it carry out its responsibility of fighting corruption in the country.

The Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, announced this yesterday and said the government was also prepared to provide additional resources for the office during the course of next year to carry out its mandate effectively.

Budget statement

Presenting the 2019 Budget Statement and Economic Policy to Parliament, Mr Ofori-Atta said the allocation was in line with a promise by the government to protect the public purse by fighting corruption.

“The Special Prosecutor’s Office, which is established under the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act 2017 (Act 959), is one of the highest priorities of the government,” he stated.

The SPO

The SPO was set up in 2017 with Mr Martin Amidu, a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General, as its first Special Prosecutor.

Since then, however, Mr Amidu has been lamenting over lack of resources for the office to function effectively.

Earlier this month, he authored an article that intimated that the SPO was utterly hopeless.

Mr Amidu said in spite of its establishment a year ago as President Akufo-Addo’s flagship tool to fight corruption in the country, the SPO was yet to be resourced to enable the office to execute its mandate.

“One year down the line, it has only a small three-bedroom house as an office, woefully inadequate to accommodate any reasonable number of employees. It lacks subsidiary legislation and is also financially crippled without any ability to acquire the requisite expensive operational anti-corruption and other equipment for the office, let alone to function efficiently,” he said in the article that was widely published.

Internal audit

In a related development, the Finance Minister has announced plans by the ministry to restructure and strengthen the internal audit function in the public sector to play its expected role in ensuring effective risk management, control and improvements in governance processes.

As a result, he said the ministry was supporting the agency to conduct extensive stakeholder consultations as part of key processes that would lead to its restructuring.

“This will help align the activities of internal auditing to national objectives,” he said.