Government lays L.I. in parliament to back office of the Special Prosecutor

The government has laid a Legislative Instrument (L.I.) in parliament to provide legal backing to the operations of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP).

Minister of Defence, Dominic Nitiwul, laid the paper on behalf of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

The two papers laid on Monday, 26 November 2018 are the Office of the Special Prosecutor Regulations, 2018; and Office of the Special Prosecutor (Operations) Regulations 2018.

Speaker of Parliament, Prof Mike Oquaye, subsequently referred the L.I. to the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of parliament.

It will be recalled that the government also allocated GHS180 million to the OSP to resource it to fight corruption.

This was announced by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta on Thursday, 15 November 2018 when he delivered the 2019 budget statement.

This comes after the Special Prosecutor, Mr Martin Amidu, had bemoaned the lack of resources for his office to function.

Parliament passed a law in November 2017 to establish the Office of the Special Prosecutor as a specialized agency to investigate specific cases of corruption involving public officers and individuals in the private sector implicated in corrupt practices.