Private legal practitioner, Kwesi Botchway Jnr, has responded to the Attorney-General Dr Dominic Ayine’s claims against former Director-General of the National Signals Bureau (NSB), Kwabena Adu-Boahene, stating he believes the Attorney-General was “misbriefed.”
In a statement titled “Setting the Records Straight: Was Kwabena Adu-Boahene a Staff of the National Signals Bureau in 2007 and Subsequently its Director in 2017? Did he steal funds from a state BNC to his private BNC, as claimed by the Attorney-General? Did the Attorney-General Lie?”, the lawyer dismantled what he calls a false foundation underpinning the criminal case being prosecuted by the state.
According to Botchway, the Attorney-General’s assertion that Adu-Boahene had served as a staff member of the National Signals Bureau (NSB) in 2007 and became its director in 2017 is “a complete lie and a deliberate attempt to misinform and mislead the public.”
He clarified that “the National Signals Bureau, an agency of the National Security Council, was established on 29th December 2020 by the National Signals Bureau Act, 2020 (Act 1040).”
According to him, before this legal framework was enacted, Adu-Boahene worked under the National Security Coordinator’s Office as part of the Bureau of National Communications (BNC), an internal unit that evolved from the Central Technical Laboratory and Workshop (CTL/W), later renamed the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
He emphasised, “As at 2007, National Signals Bureau did not exist! It also did not exist in 2017 for Adu-Boahene to be its director. Per the AG’s claim, it means Adu-Boahene was a Director of a ghost agency not recognised by law.”
He stated that the actual timeline reveals that Adu-Boahene was employed at the National Security Council Secretariat in 2007, became a director there in 2017, and assumed the role of NSB Director-General in 2021, following its legal establishment.
The private legal practitioner also took issue with the Attorney-General’s suggestion that Adu-Boahene misappropriated funds from a “State BNC Account” to a “Private BNC” account between February and September 2020.
He stated, “There is no account operated by the National Security known as ‘State BNC’. This does not exist!!”
Instead, what the Attorney-General referred to as the “State BNC” account was in fact the “Coordinator’s Account, NSC,” operated at Fidelity Bank, which had a cheque book alias labelled “The Director BNC.”
According to Botchway, this was not a dedicated account for the BNC, but rather an operational account controlled by the National Security Coordinator and co-signed by Adu-Boahene under his administrative direction.
“The account did not belong to the Bureau of National Communications,” he explained.
“But rather belonged to the National Security Coordinator. Kwabena Adu-Boahene was only a co-signatory to the account… he could not, on his own volition and unilaterally, access funds without the signature and clearance of the National Security Coordinator.”
He added that the AG and EOCO may have confused the use of the alias ‘Director BNC’ with an official account name and further criticised the AG for failing to distinguish between internal operational practice and formal state account structures.
He added that this so-called “State BNC” account was not sanctioned by the Controller and Accountant General or the Finance Minister, nor was it operated through the Bank of Ghana, thus disqualifying it from being classified as a legitimate state account.
The lawyer also addressed claims by the AG that Adu-Boahene diverted state funds into a personal company, labelled “Private BNC.”
According to the lawyer, this was a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) that was legally registered as BNC Communications Bureau Limited, with authorisation from the National Security to carry out classified and sensitive operations, such as fallout management from the 2016 NSO transaction, water security, and cyber operations.
He explained, “This SPV was a legal entity created to isolate the National Security and to achieve specific objectives… for example, the purchase of cybersecurity equipment from ISC Holdings in Israel.”
Lawyer Botchway insisted that the use of SPVs was not new, and that the National Security apparatus “has operated and continues to operate SPVs for special operational purposes.”
There was, he said, no evidence to suggest that Adu-Boahene personally benefited from the SPV or the transfers in question.
Challenging the AG’s narrative, Lawyer Botchway argued that all transactions between the Coordinator’s Account and the private BNC were operational and state-sanctioned, not personal or fraudulent.
“All funds from the National Security Coordinator’s account inaccurately and disingenuously referred to as State BNC account by the AG to the private BNC were for operational purposes and were never used for the personal benefits of Adu-Boahene,” he said in the statement.
He also questioned the plausibility of the AG’s accusation that over $7 million was misappropriated without detection, stating, “It is unreasonable and does not make sense for over $7 million to go missing in an account operated by the National Security Coordinator without him or the President realising.”
Botchway added that “the Private BNC was not a criminal enterprise as described by the AG”.
He argued that the Attorney-General had either been “misled” or “did not understand the issues” at the time of his public address.
AM/SEA
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