The Evidentiary Collapse of the NSB Case

The vendor says it was paid. The system is operational. The institution’s own finance director knows of no missing funds. And the prosecution refuses to call the two witnesses who could resolve everything. At some point, a court must ask: what exactly is being prosecuted here?

A criminal prosecution rests, at its most basic, on three propositions: that a harm or offence occurred, that it was caused by the accused, and that the evidence presented can sustain both claims beyond reasonable doubt. Remove any one of those propositions and the prosecution does not merely weaken; it loses its foundational legitimacy.

In the case before the court since the infamous March 24, 2025 Press Conference address by Ghana’s Attorney General involving the former Director General of the National Signals Bureau (NSB), all three propositions are in serious difficulty. And they are in difficulty not because of what the defence has alleged, but because of what the prosecution’s own witnesses have said, what the prosecution has refused to do, and what the documentary record now shows.

This is a case worth examining carefully not to prejudge its outcome, but because what is unfolding in that courtroom carries implications for how Ghana uses, and misuses, its prosecutorial machinery against senior national security officials.

The Prosecution’s Theory and Its Central Weakness

The Economic and Organised Crime (EOCO) Office, acting with the Attorney General (AG), has led four principal witnesses. Its core allegation, as presented in proceedings, is that the former DG misappropriated GHS49 million that was intended for the purchase of a “cyber defence system” for the state from an Israeli private vendor, ISC.

That theory has a specific structure. It requires that the GHS49 million existed as a designated fund for a specific purpose, that the purpose was not fulfilled, and that the accused is responsible for the diversion. Each element must be established by evidence. The first element that a designated fund existed for a specific purpose appears to have no documentary foundation in the prosecution’s own case. There is, by all accounts from proceedings, no record establishing that the 49 million in question was specifically allocated to the cyber defence system purchase. The prosecution’s framing of what the money was ‘meant for’ appears to rest on inference and assertion rather than documentation. The second element that the purpose was not fulfilled has been directly contradicted by two independent sources. The first is the vendor itself. The second is the prosecution’s own witness.

The Vendor’s Response: Evidence the Prosecution Will Not Pursue

ISC, the Israeli vendor at the centre of this matter, has responded in writing to the defence that it was fully paid for the cyber defence system it supplied to Ghana. The system was delivered. Annual service fees are currently being charged to and paid by the Ghanaian state through the National Signals Bureau.

The prosecution’s response to this position has been to state in various forms, that it has no interest in contacting the vendor and will not be calling ISC as a witness.

That position requires scrutiny. A prosecuting authority has been made aware of a material witness, the vendor at the centre of the alleged crime whose documented response directly contradicts the prosecution’s central theory. The prosecution has decided it is not interested in that witness.

In the architecture of a fair criminal trial, the prosecution is not merely an adversarial party. It is a minister of justice. Its obligation is not to secure a conviction but to place before the court all material evidence including evidence that does not support its theory. The decision to exclude a material witness whose evidence is exculpatory is not a prosecutorial strategy. It is a departure from the obligations of the office.

The further problem is what ISC’s communication reveals about the current state of affairs. NSB is paying annual service fees on a system whose purchase the state is simultaneously prosecuting as fraudulent. The new administration’s security apparatus, the current Director of NSB, the current National Security Coordinator is maintaining and operating a system while allowing a prosecution to proceed on the theory that the system was never properly paid for nor supplied.

That is not a minor inconsistency. It is a direct and visible contradiction between what the state is doing with the system and what the state is arguing in court about how it was acquired.

The Finance Director’s Testimony: The Prosecution’s Own Witness

Perhaps the most significant moment in these proceedings so far has been the testimony of the Director of Finance at NSB; a witness called by the prosecution.

She testified that she is unaware of any missing GHS49 million, and that she would have known if such a sum were missing from NSB’s accounts. Indeed the audited account of NSB for the period to date shows no record of such missing funds.

The institution, whose funds were allegedly stolen, represented by its own Director of Finance appearing as a state witness, has effectively said the theft the prosecution describes did not register in its own financial records. This is not a defence witness making a self-serving claim. This is a prosecution witness, under oath, describing the financial reality at NSB as she knows it. The damage to the prosecution’s case from this testimony is substantial and cannot be papered over.

It also raises the question that now sits at the heart of these proceedings: if NSB does not know about missing funds and NSB is not the complainant, then who is? The case originated from a tip-off. A tip-off is not a complainant. It is unverified information from an unverified source with unknown motives. For a prosecution of this magnitude involving a former head of a national intelligence agency, allegations of tens of millions of cedis, and implications for the operational security of the state, the absence of an institutional complainant with direct knowledge of an offence is a structural deficiency that cannot be remedied by witness testimony alone.

The National Security Coordinator: A Material Witness Absent by Design

The National Security Coordinator sits at the apex of Ghana’s intelligence oversight architecture. The NSB operates under the Coordinator’s supervision. Any significant procurement by NSB particularly one involving a foreign vendor, a cyber defence capability, and a sum of this magnitude would fall within the Coordinator’s oversight purview.

The Coordinator is therefore not a peripheral figure in this matter. The Coordinator is a material witness on the central question: was this procurement sanctioned, was the system delivered, and does the national security establishment regard GHS49 million as having been stolen from it?

The prosecution has not called the National Security Coordinator neither the oversight Minister. The Coordinator has not volunteered to appear. The silence from that office is itself a fact the court must weigh.

The current National Security Coordinator is an appointee of the current administration. The former DG who stands accused served under the previous administration that lost the December 2024 election. If the Coordinator’s testimony would support the defence confirming the procurement was sanctioned and the system was received then the Coordinator’s silence is a choice with political implications. If the Coordinator’s testimony would support the prosecution, there is no apparent reason for the prosecution not to have called them.

Either way, the absence of the Coordinator from these proceedings is not neutral. It is a gap that the court, and the public, is entitled to notice.

The Political Context That Cannot Be Wished Away

It would be intellectually dishonest to discuss this case without acknowledging its political backdrop, while simultaneously resisting the temptation to reduce everything to politics.

The former DG was appointed by and served under the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration that lost the December 2024 election. The prosecution is being driven by an Attorney General appointed by the current National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration. The current NSB Director and National Security Coordinator are new appointees of the same administration. EOCO operates under the supervisory authority of the AG.

None of that makes the prosecution automatically improper. Changes of government routinely bring prosecutorial attention to the conduct of former officials. Accountability is a legitimate public interest.

What cannot be legitimate is a prosecution that proceeds by refusing to call material witnesses, ignoring exculpatory documentary evidence from a foreign vendor, and relying on a theory that its own witnesses have contradicted while the institution allegedly defrauded continues to operate the system it was supposedly defrauded of and supposedly not delivered by the vendor.

When that pattern presents itself, the question of political motivation is not speculation. It is a reasonable inference that the prosecution has an obligation to dispel through evidence, not assertion.

What the Cross-Examination of the EOCO Investigator Must Establish

The EOCO investigator, currently the last witness under cross-examination, is the person whose professional conduct initiated and shaped this entire matter. The cross-examination is, in effect, a forensic audit of the investigation itself.

The defence ought to establish, and the court ought to have clear answers on, the following: whether the investigator assessed the credibility of the original tip-off before acting; whether NSC or any supervisory authority was consulted before the airport arrest; whether the investigator was aware, at any point, of ISC’s position regarding full payment and system delivery; what action, if any, was taken when that information became available; what independent verification was conducted to establish that GHS49 million was missing from any state account; and who determined that the money was designated for the cyber defence system, given the absence of any such documentary record.

The answers to those questions will do more to reveal the integrity of this prosecution than any volume of witness testimony about financial transactions.

What the Court Now Faces

Courts in Ghana have, over time, demonstrated an increasing capacity to examine not just whether an accused is guilty of what is alleged, but whether what is alleged was properly established in the first place. That institutional maturity is now being tested.

The case before the court has the following evidential profile as matters stand: no institutional complainant with direct knowledge of a loss; the prosecution’s own financial witness unaware of any missing funds; documentary evidence from the vendor confirming full payment and system delivery; a prosecution that has formally declined to call that vendor; a National Security Coordinator who has not appeared despite being the material supervisory authority; and a system currently operational and maintained at state expense by the very administration whose prosecutorial arm is arguing in court that its purchase was fraudulent.

A court that is asked to convict on that evidentiary foundation, without the prosecution having provided satisfactory answers to the questions that foundation raises, would be doing something other than administering justice.

The threshold question in this case is no longer simply whether the accused is guilty. It is whether the prosecution has established that the crime it alleges actually occurred.

That is a question the prosecution has, so far, answered primarily by avoiding the witnesses and documents that would resolve it.

The Institutional Stakes Beyond This Case

Whatever the outcome of this specific trial, the case has already done institutional damage that will outlast the verdict.

It has demonstrated that a tip-off, without institutional complainant, without corroboration, and without proper inter-agency consultation, can be used to arrest, charge, and publicly disgrace a former head of a national intelligence agency. It has demonstrated that a prosecuting authority can formally decline to pursue material evidence without apparent consequence. And it has put on public record the possibility, not yet proven, but not yet disproven that the prosecutorial machinery of the state can be directed against former officials of a previous government in ways that have more to do with political succession than with justice.

Those are not abstractions. They are the conditions under which every future senior intelligence official will now calculate their professional risk. An officer who knows that the political transition of power can result in prosecution based on a tip-off, without an institutional complainant, with exculpatory evidence withheld from court will make different professional decisions than one who does not.

The intelligence profession in Ghana cannot function effectively under those conditions. Neither can the rule of law.

A prosecution that cannot identify the crime, cannot produce a record of what the money was meant for, has been told by the vendor it was fully paid, and has heard its own witness say she knows of no missing funds, is a prosecution that owes the court and the country a great deal more than it has so far provided.

The author, Lawyer Kwesi Botchway Jnr, is a Ghanaian private legal practitioner and the secretary to NPP’s security, Intelligence and defence policy committee.