The Accra High Court, trying former Deputy Director of the National Service Authority (NSA), Gifty Oware-Mensah, has adjourned the case to December 17, 2025, to allow the parties to prepare for a case management conference.

The conference is a formal meeting between the judge and the lawyers for both sides to help the court organize and streamline the case so it moves efficiently toward trial, while avoiding delay.

The presiding judge, Justice Audrey Kocuvi-Tay, also indicated that the period of the adjournment would allow the lawyers of Mrs Oware-Mensah to file her witness list by December 17, 2025.

According to court documents, the former NSA Deputy Director-General is standing trial for her alleged involvement in the ghost names fraud at the Authority which resulted in the disapperance of billions of cedis.

The Attorney-General, Dominic Ayine, charged Mrs Oware-Mensah with five counts, including stealing, willfully causing financial loss to the state, and money laundering, on Monday, October 13, 2025.

The accused was to make her first appearance in court on Friday, October 17, 2025. But her lawyer on that day, Gary Nimako, produced an excuse duty to support the claim that she was indisposed.

Justice Kocuvi-Tay said she was not “happy” with her absence.

She made her first appearance in court five days later on October 22, 2025. She was granted bail to the sum of GHC10 million with three sureties. The judge said two out of the three sureties must justify the bail sum of GHC10 million with landed properties.

However, Mrs Oware-Mensah spent 20 days in the custody of the National Investigations Bureau because she could not meet her bail conditions. She was released on Tuesday, November 11, 2025 after she met the conditions.

According to court documents, Mrs Oware-Mensah created 9,934 fictitious names in the NSA database and utilised her private company, Blocks of Life Consult, to secure a GHC31.5 million loan from the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB).

The fact sheets also said she claimed her company had supplied goods on a hire-purchase basis to national service personnel. However, investigators found that the names were fictitious and no goods had been supplied.

Funds from the loan were reportedly paid into her company’s account and later transferred to other firms linked to her, causing a total loss of GHC38,458,248.87 to the state.

Background

Earlier this year, The Fourth Estate published an exposé that uncovered large-scale corruption within the NSA. The investigation revealed the padding of ghost names in the NSA’s database and manipulation of the posting schemes that caused the government to disburse millions of cedis in allowances to service personnel who existed only on paper.

Beyond exposing the existence of ghost names, the publication also raised serious concerns about value-for-money, data security, and the institutional integrity of the Centralised Service Management Platform (CSMP), also known as the Metric App, which was used to manage postings and payments.

Following The Fourth Estate’s revelations, the Office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice initiated its own probe. The Attorney-General’s investigation confirmed widespread financial irregularities, revealing that top executives of the NSA, in collusion with private-sector vendors, had mismanaged more than GHC 2.2 billion through fraudulent entries and ghost names.

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