My Office Will Hire 250 By End Of January 2022 – Kissi Agyebeng
The Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, has revealed his intentions of hiring 250 people to the office he heads by the end of January 2022.
The newly-appointed prosecutor who has been conducting media interviews ahead of the start of his role on October 1 also said he came into office to find that there was only one employee apart from the Special Prosecutor.
“By the end of January, immediately I get a board I’m going to have at least 250 staff,” he said in an interview on an Accra-based radio station on Wednesday, September 29.
“There is only one person on the payroll, I won’t disclose who. So you have a chief accountant who is on secondment and one investigator who is on secondment from the police. You have a lawyer who’s on secondment from the Attorney General’s office and that’s that. The rest then will be gatemen, cleaners, stewards, an office secretary, a special assistant to the office,” Agyebeng explained.
On the morning of Thursday, September 30, Agyebeng was on another radio station – Peace FM – where he told morning show host Kwame Sefa-Kayi that understaffing at the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) hinders the prosecutor’s constitutional mandate.
“Some of the divisions [under which we will employ] include Finance and Administration; there is no HR. We have given you Prosecution Divison but there’s no Prosecution Division. Investigation Division isn’t there. Asset Recovery and Management isn’t there. The law says the office can create more divisions if the ones stipulated in the law isn’t available, not to talk of what you (Special Prosecutor) must set up,” Agyebeng told Sefa-Kayi.
Profile of Mr Agyebeng
Kissi Agyebeng has been a lecturer at the University of Ghana School of Law since October 2006, teaching and researching Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Corporate Law, and Legal Research and Writing.
He was awarded the Bentsi-Enchill prize for the best graduating student of the University of Ghana School of Law in 2001. He proceeded to the Ghana School of Law and was called to the Ghana Bar in October 2003, earning the E.N. Sowah Memorial prize for best student in Family Law.
Since then, he has successfully argued numerous cases before the superior courts of Ghana and has participated in several international arbitration hearings.
Kissi Agyebeng also has a wide range of expertise in consulting for public sector institutions, including the Attorney General’s Department, Exim Bank Ghana Ltd., Youth Employment Authority, National Lottery Authority, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Trade Fair Company Limited, and the Ghana Olympic Committee.
Kissi is also an Associate at the African Center for Cyber Law and Cyber Crime Prevention and the National Moot Court Coordinator for the Commonwealth Moot Court Competition on International Criminal Justice. He was the Vice-Chair of the Appeals Committee of the Ghana Football Association.
Kissi Agyebeng is the Managing Partner of Cromwell Gray LLP, a reputable law firm in Accra, and the Chairman of the Electronic Communications Tribunal of Ghana – which is an appeal tribunal that sits on appeals from decisions or orders made by the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the Dispute Resolution Committee of the NCA, in respect of the regulation of electronic communications, the regulation of broadcasting, and the use of the electromagnetic spectrum and related matters.
He is famously recognised as the lawyer for investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas.