Witness Tells Court Gifty Oware-Mensah Personally Authorised Transfer of NSA Funds Into Her Own Company’s Account
The trial of former National Service Authority Deputy Executive Director Gifty Oware-Mensah took a dramatic turn on Tuesday when the first prosecution witness revealed that the accused herself had personally directed the transfer of NSA funds into the account of her own company, Blocks of Life Consult Limited.
Gilbert Serbeh Yeboah, Head of Commercial Banking at the Agricultural Development Bank, made the disclosure while testifying under cross-examination, maintaining throughout that the bank acted strictly on instructions received directly from Ms Oware-Mensah.
At the centre of his testimony was a letter dated March 2, 2023, tendered as Exhibit D, which he described as the authorising document under which the transfers were executed.
Reading from the letter in open court, Mr Yeboah stated: “We authorise that funds be transferred from the NSS hire purchase account to Blocks of Life.”
He described the instruction, signed by Oware-Mensah in her capacity as Deputy NSS Director, as “unambiguous,” adding that the bank carried it out accordingly.
Defence lawyers mounted a challenge against the weight of the document, arguing that it could not reasonably be interpreted as a standing instruction covering subsequent and future transfers.
Mr Yeboah stood firm, insisting that the bank understood the directive as a clear authority to move funds to Blocks of Life and that Ms Oware-Mensah was contacted and consulted ahead of each individual transfer through a combination of emails, letters, WhatsApp messages and telephone calls — though none of those communications were presented as evidence during Tuesday’s proceedings.
The witness also pushed back against any suggestion that responsibility for the transactions lay with the bank, arguing that had there been any irregularity with the authorisation, it was ultimately the NSA’s obligation to reject the transfers.
“It will interest you to know that the bank received every dime of the transfer,” he told the court.
Cross-examination also probed the mechanics of the NSA hire purchase account held at ADB — a suspense account established under an employer-based loan scheme for National Service Personnel.
Mr Yeboah explained that repayments flowed primarily through the e-Zwich platform, through which service personnel received their allowances. Because only 90 percent of e-Zwich funds could be moved electronically, the remaining 10 percent had to be withdrawn as cash and physically deposited into the account by bank staff.
The defence drew attention to a series of cash deposits made by ADB Relationship Officer Christian Abotchie and colleague Nana Serwaa Osei-Agyemang, questioning the nature of those transactions.
Mr Yeboah confirmed both officers made deposits but maintained they were a routine part of the e-Zwich repayment process and carried nothing unusual.
Defence counsel also challenged the reliability of Exhibit C — the bank statement tendered by the prosecution — arguing that inconsistencies in how loan repayments were recorded, appearing sometimes as debits and other times as credits, undermined its credibility.
The witness dismissed the concern, explaining that repayments received from the NSA were first credited to the suspense account before being debited and channelled into the actual loan accounts, a standard banking procedure.
Mr Yeboah further denied that ADB had deliberately withheld loan account records or the bank statements of Blocks of Life Consult Limited, clarifying that while he personally managed the NSA account, the Blocks of Life account was handled by ADB’s Gulf House branch and that investigators had already requested and obtained the relevant documentation.
The case has been adjourned to June 11, 2026, when cross-examination of the prosecution’s first witness is set to continue.
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