Ghana’s Attorney-General, Dominic Ayine, is engaging US counterparts to pursue others allegedly involved in a bribery scheme after a Ghanaian-American banker’s conviction in New York, a deputy said.
Deputy Attorney-General Justice Srem Sai said in a Facebook post on Saturday that Ayine was engaging US counterparts “to bring to book persons implicated in the bribery scheme.”
A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Asante Kwaku Berko, a dual US-Ghanaian citizen and former Goldman Sachs executive director, of conspiring to violate the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), violating the FCPA, and conspiring to commit money laundering, following a nine-day trial.
The verdict caps a legal saga stretching back to 2020, when the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) first accused Berko of orchestrating the scheme. He settled that civil case in June 2021, agreeing to pay $329,163.92, including $275,000 in disgorged gains, without admitting wrongdoing, and was permanently barred from violating the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions.
Berko was arrested in London in November 2022 on an Interpol notice and spent nearly two years fighting extradition before being sent to the United States in July 2024. He pleaded not guilty and went on trial before US District Judge Diane Gujarati.
Prosecutors said Berko, tasked from December 2014 with securing financing for a Turkish company’s power plant deal in Ghana amid a national energy crisis, helped arrange more than $1 million in bribes to Ghanaian officials, including a planned $1 million payment to the country’s power minister at the time and $5,000 payments to five officials during a trip to Turkey. Goldman Sachs later withdrew from the transaction after identifying corruption concerns, and Berko resigned as managing director of Ghana’s Tema Oil Refinery in April 2020 after the allegations first surfaced.
Ghana’s Parliament approved the power plant agreement in July 2015. Berko faces up to 30 years in prison at sentencing in November. Ghanaian authorities have not publicly named any other individuals under investigation in connection with the scheme.
