Vice President of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education says the corruption against graft would make positive strides if heads of public institutions were proactive.

Kofi Bentil says Ghana has a progressive anti-corruption regime, but heads of public institutions have consistently failed at using existing laws to ensure accountability.

His comments on Saturday on Newsfile on the Joy News channel on Multi TV follows the recent Supreme Court ruling directing the Auditor-General to take steps to retrieve monies stolen from the state by public officials.

Pressure group, Occupy Ghana, which Mr Bentil is a member of, secured the judgment directing Daniel Domelevo to issue disallowance and surcharges in respect of all state monies found to have been misappropriated.

The pressure group secured the legal victory after more than three years of fierce activism against what it said was the lethargic attitude of Auditors-General with respect to the application of laws directing it to protect the public purse.

“Sometimes our officials assume that they don’t have to work. This issue shouldn’t have even gone to court. People have to power [but] they take the perks, they get their money but they don’t do anything until citizens compel them or go on a demonstration or take them to court,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Auditor-General has said he has started gathering the needed evidence to reinforce his powers of disallowance and surcharge.

He said he has to meticulously build a file which has evidence for each of the cases before proceeding.

Speaking Newsfile, he said he will only retrieve monies from those he is able to build a strong case based on the evidence against.

Read: State can only retrieve monies based on strong evidence - Auditor General

"If I surcharge you and you don't agree with me and we go to court, I cannot just pull out just my report to say this is the evidence to your embezzlement. I must show documents that you signed this and that vouchers for this payment, showing the invoice number and all," he told host Samson Lardy Anyenini.

He admitted that although the report is with the Attorney-General's office and the source documents are with the Audit Service, the documents are scattered all over the country.