NSA ghost names trial conference halted over unpaginated prosecution documents
Mr Assibey Antwi is standing trial over allegations linked to the National Service “ghost names” payroll scandal. He has pleaded not guilty.
The criminal trial of former National Service Authority Director-General, Osei Assibey Antwi, suffered another delay after the court halted the case management conference over concerns about prosecution documents.
The issue arose on Monday, July 13, 2026, when lawyers in the case began the conference ahead of the substantive trial.
Mr Assibey Antwi is standing trial over allegations linked to the National Service “ghost names” payroll scandal.
He has pleaded not guilty.
After proceedings, his lawyer, Ralph Poku-Adusei, told journalists that the conference could not continue properly because the prosecution had filed several documents without page numbers.
According to him, the absence of pagination made it difficult for the court and the parties to identify and refer to specific documents during the process.
“We came very early, at about 12 o'clock. At the end of the day, we were able to start the case management conference. But there was a very critical issue I raised, which is that there were so many documents, but they had not been paginated,” he said.
Mr Poku-Adusei said he had earlier asked that the documents be numbered before the conference proceeded.
He said the parties initially continued with the process, but the problem later became more difficult to manage.
“I indicated before we started that they should take the documents and paginate them or put page numbers on them. It turned out that we should proceed, and we did some work. But at the end of the day, the court had to adjourn because the issue was compounding,” he stated.
The court subsequently suspended the case management conference and directed the prosecution to properly paginate the documents filed in the case.
“So today's case management conference has been halted by the court, and the judge has ordered that they should find a way to paginate the bulk of documents they have filed. We are here; we will wait for them, and when they are ready, we will come back. As for now, they are not ready,” counsel added.
The development follows earlier adjournments intended to give the prosecution time to complete the filing of disclosures.
The case remains at the pre-trial stage as the parties work through the documents required before the trial can begin.
