Deputy Attorney General Dr Justice Srem Sai has revealed that most of the individuals implicated in the fraud at the National Service Secretariat (NSS) are willing to return the money they allegedly stole.
He says the state is open to retrieving the funds and using some of the suspects as witnesses in court.
“We are talking about over GH¢560 million. That’s what we are looking at from the 22 individuals that investigators believe were responsible for, if you like, alleged loot,” Dr Srem Sai disclosed on JoyNews’ PM Express on Wednesday.
According to him, the state has now completed investigations into one leg of the wider National Service case — the part involving ghost names.
The report was only submitted last week. Prosecutors have begun building a docket to move toward formal charges.
He explained that the alleged fraud took place in multiple forms.
“National Service is in different aspects,” he said. “There’s an aspect of the projects that the National Service Secretariat undertakes.
“They have farms where they acquire property, grow and sell produce. Then there is the issue of paying ghost National Service persons.”
The current investigation only covers the ghost names. That is where the GH¢560 million figure comes from. But the state has to make careful decisions.
“There are more people,” he confirmed, “but you have to weigh the cost in terms of time and effort of bringing all these people to court, and the benefit you get of retrieving the money.”
So, prosecutors have begun talking to the suspects. “A lot of them — only a few are not willing — but a lot of them are willing to return the money,” he revealed.
Some of them have even offered to serve as prosecution witnesses.
“Definitely, before we go to court, the number will not be 22. It will come down, because we are still having conversations with these people,” he said.
He hinted at a wider strategy that includes plea bargaining.
“After we charge them, some of them also have an opportunity to do what we call plea bargaining. To come and say, ‘Well, we are guilty. But instead of sending us to prison for this number of years, you can come down to this, and we return this amount of money.’”
He said prosecutors listen to these proposals and evaluate them seriously. “They give us the reasons why we should not go with them through the entire process.”
Though Dr Srem Sai did not name the suspects, he made it clear that the state’s priority is recovery and justice, not spectacle.
“We want the money back,” he said, and those who cooperate may help bring others to book.
Source: Abubakar Ibrahim
