For 20 years, Ghana has moved from scandals worth millions of cedis to cases involving billions.
But the biggest number is not always the biggest loss.
Some cases involve money allegedly stolen. Some concern waste or poor contracts. Others involve projects that failed, private investors who lost money, or public spending that auditors questioned.
To show the true size of older scandals, StatsGH also looked at what the cedi was worth when the money changed hands. Where useful, old cedi amounts were converted into dollars using the exchange rate at the time, then compared with what those dollars would roughly be worth today.
The result is a clearer picture of the scale.
National Service
The National Service scandal has become one of Ghana’s largest recent public-finance cases.
The Attorney-General first put the alleged loss at GH¢548.3 million. A later forensic audit by the Auditor-General raised the amount said to have been stolen or illegally spent to GH¢2.2 billion.
A headcount had earlier found 81,885 suspected ghost names on the National Service system.
GH¢2.2 billion was worth roughly US$180 million using the average 2025 exchange rate.
The case is before the courts. Those charged are presumed innocent unless convicted.
SML
The SML case also runs into billions, but one widely quoted number needs care.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor puts the alleged financial loss at about GH¢1.44 billion, not GH¢14 billion.
It has brought corruption-related charges against several people and SML. It also alleges that the arrangements could have led to another US$2.8 billion being paid over five years.
That US$2.8 billion was not actually paid.
The difference matters. Potential future payments are not the same as money already lost.
Menzgold
Menzgold shows how a financial scandal can reach ordinary households directly.
Prosecutors say Menzgold and Brew Marketing Consult took more than GH¢1.68 billion from about 16,000 customers between 2017 and 2018.
At the 2018 exchange rate, GH¢1.68 billion was worth roughly US$360 million.
After allowing for US inflation, that is equivalent to more than US$450 million today.
Spread evenly across 16,000 customers, GH¢1.68 billion works out at about GH¢105,000 each. Actual customer losses differed.
The criminal case remains subject to the courts.
The financial-sector clean-up
Ghana’s banking clean-up was not itself a corruption scandal.
It was the government’s response to banks, savings and loans companies and other financial institutions that had failed.
But some institutions had serious problems, including insider lending, weak corporate governance and poor financial reporting.
The rescue became extremely expensive.
Government figures eventually put the wider cost of resolving failed financial institutions at almost GH¢27 billion.
That does not mean GH¢27 billion was stolen.
It means taxpayers had to carry a huge bill after large parts of the financial sector got into trouble.
Ghana@50
Ghana celebrated 50 years of independence in 2007.
Parliament approved about US$31.8 million for the celebrations.
An Auditor-General’s examination later found GH¢71.7 million in expenditure against GH¢29.31 million approved for the programmes it examined.
That was about 145% above the approved amount.
The audit also found weaknesses in financial records and controls.
The sums may look small beside today’s billion-cedi cases. They were not small then. The cedi was worth far more than it is today.
Woyome
Alfred Agbesi Woyome received GH¢51.2 million from the state following a claim linked to projects connected with the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations.
The Supreme Court later ordered the money recovered after ruling that the payment was unconstitutional. Woyome was acquitted in the separate criminal case.
GH¢51.2 million sounds modest beside today’s scandals.
It was not.
At the 2011 exchange rate, it was worth roughly US$33 million.
Allowing for US inflation, that is around US$47 million in today’s money.
This is why comparing old scandals only in cedis can badly understate their size.
African Games
Ghana hosted the African Games in 2024.
An Auditor-General’s examination later reported about GH¢580 million in financial irregularities connected with the Games.
The findings covered issues including procurement, payments, construction and financial controls.
But GH¢580 million in irregularities does not mean GH¢580 million was stolen.
An audit irregularity can include unsupported spending, procurement breaches, recoverable money and other failures.
It is still a very large number.
National Cathedral
The National Cathedral may be Ghana’s clearest example of a large public bill attached to an unfinished project.
About US$58 million had already been associated with spending on the project.
A later Deloitte audit found that another US$39 million was due to the contractor, taking the project’s cost incurred or financial commitments to about US$97 million.
This does not mean US$97 million had all been paid.
But the contrast is striking.
Ghana had incurred or committed close to US$100 million, yet the promised cathedral remained unfinished.
PDS
The PDS electricity deal collapsed in 2019 after problems emerged with the guarantees supporting the concession.
One of the biggest consequences came from outside Ghana.
The country lost about US$190 million in funding from the US Millennium Challenge Corporation.
That money could have gone into Ghana’s electricity system.
US$190 million in 2019 is worth roughly US$235 million to US$240 million in today’s dollars.
Again, this was not US$190 million stolen from a government account.
It was money Ghana lost access to after a major public deal failed.
SkyTrain
The SkyTrain case involves much less money, but perhaps the simplest story.
In 2019, US$2 million left the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund for a proposed SkyTrain project.
The train was never built.
Former officials have since faced criminal charges over the payment. They deny wrongdoing and the case remains before the courts.
US$2 million in 2019 is worth roughly US$2.5 million today.
The number is small beside National Service or PDS.
The question it leaves is much easier to understand: Ghana paid US$2 million towards a train project and still has no SkyTrain.
The numbers that do not fit neatly
Several other famous controversies require the same caution.
A US$74 million Zoomlion waste-bin contract was alleged to have been overpriced by more than US$30 million. But the contract was cancelled, so US$74 million should not be counted as money lost.
Ghana paid about US$2.85 million in advance under the controversial Sputnik V vaccine deal. Most of that money was later refunded after only a small number of doses arrived.
About US$12 million was spent on administrative and advisory work connected with the Agyapa royalties deal, which did not finally go ahead.
About US$12 million was also paid towards the Pwalugu project. Authorities say some early works were done, so saying Ghana paid US$12 million for absolutely nothing would overstate the evidence.
COVID-19 produced another set of huge numbers. The Auditor-General reported GH¢21.84 billion in total resources mobilised for Ghana’s COVID response between 2020 and June 2022. It also raised concerns about large outstanding vaccine payments and other weaknesses.
These figures should be examined individually, not added together and called stolen money.
Ghana’s scandals are getting harder to understand
Twenty years ago, GH¢50 million sounded enormous.
Today Ghana regularly discusses public transactions measured in billions of cedis.
Part of that change is inflation. Part comes from the fall in the value of the cedi. Government itself has also become much bigger.
That can hide the true size of old scandals.
Woyome’s GH¢51.2 million, for example, was worth about US$33 million at the time. In today’s dollars, its buying power was closer to US$47 million.
The lesson from these cases is therefore not that one political era lost exactly this amount and another lost exactly that amount.
The figures cannot honestly be added together.
They measure different things.
What they do show is a repeated problem. Huge sums have passed through Ghana’s public institutions, banks and major contracts. Too often, questions about controls, procurement and value for money came afterwards.
For ordinary Ghanaians, that is the number that matters.
Every badly managed million has another possible use: a classroom, a hospital ward, a road, electricity infrastructure or money that never needed to be taken from taxpayers in the first place.