From Accused to Advocate: Ken Ofori-Atta, Lawyer Enayat Qasimi, and a Familiar Escape Route

There is a reason serious prosecutors fear documents more than speeches. Documents remember. And the man now touring studios to launder indignation for Ken Ofori-Atta has a documentary footprint of his own that deserves daylight.

Enayat Qasimi did not step into public life as a saintly defender of rights. Long before he became a Washington-based advocate, he served as Afghanistan’s Minister of Transport. That tenure ended under the cloud of formal corruption allegations by Afghan prosecutors. The accusations were specific. Abuse of office. Misappropriation linked to aircraft procurement. Inflated contracts. A state airline deal was allegedly overpriced by millions. He was arrested. He was detained. He was released on bail while investigations continued. The case did not result in exoneration. It dissolved into distance.

This matters because it establishes a pattern. Not guilt. A pattern. When accountability approaches, the response is not ledgers but leverage. Not courtrooms but corridors. Not answers but narratives.

Now place that history beside the present.

Ofori-Atta is not being hunted for opinions. He is being sought for transactions. Revenue assurance arrangements that haemorrhaged state income. Procurement processes that bypassed approvals. Public funds spent with private discretion. A tax refund account treated like loose change. These are not metaphors. They are line items under investigation by the Office of the Special Prosecutor.

What is the defence strategy? Not to disprove the facts. To attack the forum.

Qasimi’s public campaign follows the same architecture as his past entanglements. Recast prosecutors as persecutors. Shift attention from contracts to constitutions. Replace timelines with trauma. When the facts are heavy, float the story.

Notice what is missing. No forensic rebuttal of the SML arrangements. No document trail dismantling procurement breaches. No audited explanation of the tax refund account. Instead, we get interviews about health, politics, and feelings. This is not a legal defence. It is reputational fog.

A lawyer with unresolved corruption allegations in his own public service past now asks Ghana to suspend scrutiny of a client accused of abusing public office. He asks the public to trust his moral outrage while refusing to submit his client to the very process that could clear him. That is not advocacy. That is projection.

The playbook is familiar. Delay long enough, and memory fades. Complicate long enough, and fatigue sets in. Internationalise long enough and domestic resolve weakens. Turn law enforcement into a culture war. Cast warrants as wickedness. Call cooperation optional.

If Qasimi truly believes in due process, the prescription is simple. Produce the client. Submit to questioning. File motions in court. Let judges rule. Anything else is theatre.

Ghana does not owe apologies for enforcing its statutes. It owes its citizens answers about how their money was handled. Until those answers are given, every press conference is a distraction, and every sermon is suspect.

Ghana is not on trial for asking questions. The questions themselves are on trial because someone refuses to answer them, and a man with a past still shadowed by unanswered questions has no standing to demand silence for a client now facing his own.

From Kabul to Accra, the geography may change, but the method remains the same: when questions close in, answers are replaced with distance, noise, and delay.