A former member of the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) Committee, Martin Kpebu, has disputed claims that the government could recover up to $21.19 billion from stolen state assets, saying the figure was not collectively established by the committee.
Mr Kpebu said the amount cited by Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa represented his personal assessment and had not been agreed upon by committee members.
Speaking in a follow-up interview on Joy FM’s SMS on Wednesday, November 4, he said the committee did not conduct an assessment that established the potential recovery figure.
He stressed that neither he nor other members had endorsed the amount announced by Mr Ablakwa, who chaired the committee.
“Let us remember that the comment that was made (by Mr Ablakwa) was a personal comment, it was not by the committee, it was one of our members who made the comment and I didn’t endorse it neither any of our member endorsed it,” he said.
“It is not a collective decision. He (Mr Ablakwa) said ‘if we are successful’, so it is a conditional clause,” he added.
Mr Kpebu’s comments follow Mr Ablakwa’s announcement in February 2025 that Ghana could potentially recover $21.19 billion after reviewing 36 major cases involving high-value transactions and alleged losses of state assets through land-related dealings.
Mr Ablakwa said the estimated recovery could exceed the financial support Ghana had been seeking from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
