A Prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of the Former Director of the National Signals Bureau, Kwabena Adu Boahene, appears to have corroborated portions of a 7th May 2025 memo from the lawyers of Kwabena Adu Boahene to the National Security Coordinator detailing operational expenditure of monies he and two others are being accused of stealing.

The Prosecution witness, Edith Ruby Opokua Adumuah, who also doubles as the Director of Finance at the National Signals Bureau, in a witness statement dated the 2nd of June 2025, mentioned that she was indeed the custodian of all the chequebooks of the bank accounts held by the Bureau.

She further revealed that before any cheque payment was made on the main account, a request was made by the recipient unit through the head of Administration, who then forwarded the request to the Director of BNC for approval after the necessary documents had been attached before certification by the internal Audit unit for authorization of payment. 

Ms Opokua Adumuah also revealed that the operational account of the BNC, by standard procedure, is managed by the Director of BNC (Kwabena Adu Boahene) with the able supervision of the National Security Coordinator.

Indeed, Lawyers for Mr Adu Boahene have persistently emphasised the point that the Bureau of National Communications account functioned as a special operations account, while the BNC Communications Bureau account served as a special-purpose vehicle to carry out sensitive transactions.

Paragraph 8 of Ms Opokua Adumuah’s statement actually mentions that before a cheque was signed on the operational account, Kwabena Adu Boahene would always inform her either verbally or through a phone call before cheques were written. She would then forward it to both Mr Adu Boahene for his signature and that of the National Security Coordinator Joshua Kyeremeh.

In paragraph 14, witness Edith Ruby Opokua Adumuah confirms that payments were indeed made to the Israeli Company ISC Holdings Limited, which delivered the cyber defense system for the National Signals Bureau.

“I know of ISC Holdings Limited. A1 (Kwabena Adu Boahene) gave me an invoice of Seven Million United States dollars (US$7,000,000.00) to transfer funds to ISC Holdings Limited.

The invoice was dated September 1, 2020. BNC commenced paying for this invoice on October 15, 2020.

We made a payment to ISC Holding on the invoice from BNC's "The Director BNC" accountant at Fidelity Bank.

I know that BNC paid as much as Three million and One hundred and ten thousand United States dollars (3,110,000.00) in respect of this invoice. I have copies of the invoice and the payments. I wish to tender them in evidence (INDEX EROA1).

This transaction is from the transaction in respect of which A1, A2, A3 and A4 are being tried.”

It will, therefore, be disingenuous for one to suggest that expenditure from the operational account of the National Signals Bureau, which is often clothed in secrecy but subject to prior approval from the National Security Coordinator, would be misconstrued to mean that the various sums were diverted into the private pockets of Mr Adu Boahene and his wife.

Indeed, the said expenditure, which is at the centre of this entire case, was detailed by lawyers of Kwabena Adu Boahene in a memo written to the current National security Coordinator on the 7th of May 2025.

Among other things, the memo attached a table of special operations expenditure summary, including the payment of allowances to Members of Parliament in the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of Parliament and the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament for the Enactment of the National Signals Bureau (NSB) Act in 2020.

The expenditure also included an amount of GH¢8.3 million reportedly allocated to an opposition party for procuring communications equipment to support election results collation and GH¢5,135,000 allegedly paid to the special aide of the President-elect for the purchase of high-end vehicles, including a Nissan Patrol Platinum, a 2024 Nissan Patrol Titanium, and a 2022 Land Cruiser GXR.

As we await the next court hearing, Ghanaians are anxiously hoping that the accused will be given a fair trial as enshrined in the 1992 republican constitution, which stresses the fundamental need for an accused to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by a competent court of jurisdiction.