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Martin Luther Kpebu, a private legal practitioner, has said the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) set up by President Akufo-Addo to handle corruption and corruption-related issues is not fit for purpose.

According to him, the President has succeeded in controlling the Office by not giving it the freewill to fight corruption as the purpose it was intended for.

Martin Kpebu, speaking on the KeyPoints on TV3 Saturday, December 21, 2024, noted that the Special Prosecutor has been lamenting over the impediments stifling his role which Ghanaians have not paid attention to.

He says it is for such reasons that the creation of a committee to spearhead President-elect Mahama’s Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) is a masterstroke to complement the role of the anti-corruption institutions in the country.

“The Act is not fit for purpose. The Special Prosecutor Act, I’m telling you, is not fit for purpose. Why do you think Akufo-Addo has succeeded in masquerading Kissi Agyebeng? He has succeeded because, do you know if you send a petition now to the Office of the Special Prosecutor, from the information we are getting, you’ll see that it will go straight to him. If Kissi Agyebeng wants to work on it, he will work on it, if he doesn’t want to work on it, that’s Akufo-Addo not wanting him [to work on it]” he stated.

He continued that the President determines which cases the OSP should further and which ones not to.

“Kissi was crying at that press conference. He was crying because Akufo-Addo, they’ll call him, stop this thing, stop it! Not this one. So the rest of the population, how do we get visibility of that complaint? So they (complaint) go to him then the paymasters…, you think Gabby put him there for nothing?” he quizzed.

Several concerns have come out following the setting up of a five-member committee to spearhead a campaign by the President-elect, tagged Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) meant to fight corruption.

But according to Mahama, his outfit received several calls and text messages from people regarding corruption and corruption-related activities in various places that require probe.

He explains that it became necessary that evidence substantiating these allegations are put together and forwarded to the appropriate state agencies mandated to work on them after taking over the government.

John Mahama says the team will not be determining which individual or group to be investigate and prosecuted or otherwise, but would rather assemble the evidences being provided by the public for onward action to be taken by the appropriate state institutions.

“Some call me on my phone, some text me, others pass through other people. We want a focal point where all that evidence is directed so that they can assemble that evidence and once we come into office…, ORAL is not going to be investigating people. It is going to gather the evidence and pass that evidence to the government institutions that are supposed to do that kind of work,” he explained.

The President-elect was speaking on Thursday, December 19, 2024, when Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana, Myriam Montrat, paid a courtesy call on him.

“With regards to ORAL, Operation Recover All Loot, I announced the appropriately committee and I think people are misunderstanding it. We are receiving a lot of information on things that are going wrong, corruption scandals and all that,” he stated.

John Mahama urged Ghanaians to provide every evidence of corruption they have to the team so they can subsequently submit to the requisite institutions for action to be taken.

Kpebu, Kofi Boakye, Ablakwa & Domelevo make Mahama’s anti-corruption team