The Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) Committee has identified $21.19 billion in potential recoveries from looted state assets and undervalued land sales.
At the handover of the committee’s report today in Accra, ORAL Chairman Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa highlighted key cases that could boost Ghana’s financial standing.
Financial recoveries from corruption cases
Ablakwa revealed that ORAL’s investigation into 36 high-profile cases alone could yield up to $20.49 billion.
“If we are successful in recoveries, we can retrieve as much as 20.49 billion United States dollars,” he stated. These cases include major corruption scandals involving the National Cathedral project, Power Distribution Services (PDS), and the Saltpond decommissioning project, among others.
He said ORAL’s findings indicate that prime state lands were sold at shockingly low prices, leading to an estimated revenue loss of $702.8 million. “Some people acquired prime Cantonments land for as low as 42,000 cedis—land that should fetch $500,000 or more per plot at fair market value,” Ablakwa disclosed.
Role of accountability in recovery efforts
The committee emphasized that the proper revaluation and reclamation of state lands could be a game-changer for Ghana’s economy. “If we just ask people to pay the real market value, we stand to recover this amount,” Ablakwa asserted.
Beyond local recovery
Ablakwa said ORAL has also received significant international interest in assisting Ghana in offshore asset recovery. “We have received a number of international requests to support this initiative, particularly in forensic tracking of offshore accounts,” he revealed. Some of these firms have offered their services at no upfront cost, instead requesting a small percentage of successful recoveries.
Step towards financial independence
Ablakwa emphasized the significance of these recoveries, especially given Ghana’s recent financial constraints. “This amount is far more than what we have been chasing the IMF for, and subjecting ourselves to all kinds of conditionalities,” he pointed out.
The ORAL Committee, established on December 18, 2024, under President John Dramani Mahama’s administration, has been tasked with identifying and retrieving looted state assets.
The team, chaired by the North Tongu Member of Parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, also has former Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelevo; Commissioner of Police Kofi Boakye (retd); private legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu, and journalist, Raymond Archer, as members.
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Meanhile, the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) team has stated that a significant portion of the corruption-related cases presented to President John Dramani Mahama on Monday, February 10, will require thorough auditing to establish wrongdoing and determine the appropriate legal actions.
The call for audits follows the team’s extensive efforts to compile corruption-related complaints from various sectors, culminating in a report detailing over 2,417 cases.
During a discussion on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday, February 11, Daniel Domelevo, a member of the ORAL team, underscored the need for an independent and in-depth financial and procurement audit to establish the veracity of the allegations.
Speaking with host Bernard Avle, the former Auditor-General clarified that ORAL lacks the legal mandate to investigate cases independently and, as a result, the necessary agencies must conduct forensic audits to verify breaches before any legal actions can proceed.
He further stressed that ORAL’s primary role was information gathering, not investigation.
“The President promised he was going to recover all loot and after the elections, he was inundated by messages of reported corruption and so he thought it wise to put us together to collect those information and so what we presented yesterday was on corruption and corruption related cases, financial fraud and procurement breaches.
“The bulk of it needs auditing to establish those had procurement breaches and cases that were not in line with the laws of Ghana because we didn’t do any investigation. We don’t have a mandate to investigate, ours was to collect information.
