Anti-Corruption agency, Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) has called for an independent probe into bribery reports made against the recently-resigned Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) Asante Berko.
In an open letter to President today April 20, 2020, GII stated: “To ensure, in the spirit of transparency and accountability, that government will publish the findings of the investigations to assist public officials and politicians to recognise and desist from similar incidences of corruption (i.e. if anything untoward is found) in the future,” GII added in the open letter.
Other organizations including as the Institute of Energy Securities (IES) has expressed misgivings over the government’s reaction to the allegations and the curious way Mr Berko was allowed to resign his position.
Asante Berko was in 2016 brokering a deal between Ghana and Turkish energy company Enerji Uretim AS (AKSA). But the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claim the contract was fraught with bribery money totalling some US$2.5 million.
According to the American SEC which referred to AKSA as “the Energy Company”, the whole project was facilitated through a US$ 2.5 million bribe paid by Asante Berko to government officials and parliamentarians.
The transaction which spanned between 2015 and 2016 was coordinated by Berko who was then a top banker a when he was a banker at Goldman Sachs.
“The Energy Company transferred at least $2.5 million of the planned $3 million to $4.5 million to the Intermediary Company, all or most of which was used to bribe Ghanaian government officials,” the SEC said in a complaint filed at the United States District Court in New York a few days ago.
“Berko schemed to bribe various government officials in the Republic of Ghana (“Ghana”) so that a client of the Subsidiary, a Turkish Energy Company (the “Energy Company”), would win a contract (the “Power Purchase Agreement”) to build and operate an electrical power plant in Ghana and sell the power to the Ghanaian government (the “Power Plant Project” or “Project”). To effect the corrupt scheme, Berko arranged for the Energy Company to funnel between $3 million to $4.5 million to a Ghana-based company (the “Intermediary Company”) to bribe various government officials responsible for approving the Power Plant Project,” the SEC wrote in the complaint sighted by Whatsup News.