Ghana sues Jospong founder Siaw Agyepong over $2 million claimed gap in a $178 million road contract

Ghana's Attorney-General Dr Dominic Ayine has filed a lawsuit in court against J.A. Plant Pool Ghana Limited and its Executive Chairman Dr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, seeking to recover $2 million the state claims was overpaid under a contract executed as part of the District Road Improvement Programme.

The legal action marks the sharpest escalation yet in a dispute between the government and the Jospong Group of Companies that has been building since October 2025, shifting the confrontation from press briefings and public demands to formal judicial proceedings. Siaw Agyepong and J.A. Plant Pool responded swiftly and forcefully on Tuesday, June 2, rejecting the claim in its entirety and vowing to contest the lawsuit vigorously.

The numbers at the centre of the dispute are these: court documents show the government and J.A. Plant Pool signed a 2024 contract for road construction equipment, machinery and related services under the DRIP initiative, with a stated total value of $178,704,739.50. The procurement was approved by the Public Procurement Authority on January 10, 2024. The Attorney-General argues that the sum of individual line items in the contract schedule amounts to $176,704,739.50, leaving an unexplained gap of $2 million. The state contends it paid the higher stated figure in full and that Plant Pool has refused to return the disputed amount despite formal demands.

Ayine is not treating this as a clerical discrepancy. "It wasn't a clerical error," he told JoyNews in January 2026, citing invoices obtained from multiple government agencies as evidence that the overpayment was deliberate. He had already signalled the lawsuit was coming at that point.

J.A. Plant Pool and Dr Siaw Agyepong categorically denied the allegation in a statement issued in Accra. The company said it owes no debt to the Government of Ghana or any of its agencies under the DRIP contract, and described the lawsuit as being filed in bad faith. It also raised a separate grievance: the lawsuit had been widely reported in the media before it was formally served on either the company or its executive chairman, which the statement said had caused severe and unjustified reputational damage to J.A. Plant Pool, the broader Jospong Group of Companies and their local and international business partners. The company has instructed its legal team to challenge the action in court and seek its dismissal.

Siaw Agyepong is one of Ghana's most prominent businessmen and the founder of the Jospong Group of Companies, a diversified conglomerate with interests spanning waste management, ICT, banking, automotive, agriculture and construction. Zoomlion Ghana Limited, the group's waste management subsidiary, is among the best-known companies in the country. The group employs tens of thousands of people and operates across multiple African countries. Its DRIP contract, awarded through the Public Procurement Authority, was for the supply of road construction equipment and machinery to support government infrastructure development.

The dispute sits within a broader context of the new Mahama administration's scrutiny of major contracts awarded under the previous Bawumia-era government. Several large infrastructure and procurement deals have faced review or legal challenge since January 2026. Jospong's profile as a major government contractor over multiple administrations puts it in a prominent position within that scrutiny landscape.

The Attorney-General's case is expected to proceed before the courts, where the claims and counterclaims will be fully litigated.