Asante Berko, Director General of TOR
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has accepted the resignation letter of the Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery, Mr Asante Berko, who is facing charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), of the United States of America for breaching the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, (FCPA).
According to a statement signed by the Director of Communications at the Presidency, Eugene Arhin, “President Akufo-Ado has accepted Mr Asante Berko’s resignation, and duly notified the Board of Directors of TOR of this development. The President wished him well in his future endeavours.”
Mr Berko, until his appointment as the Managing Director of TOR, was a banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission of US have arranged Asante Berko, a former executive at Goldman’s London subsidiary for facilitating as much as $4.5 million in bribes to help a Turkish energy company.
The payment was allegedly made to gain approval for a client’s power plant project from “2015 through at least 2016,” according to court documents from New York.
The SEC says the energy company, which wasn’t named, funnelled money to an intermediary, which then paid bribes to officials of the erstwhile John Mahama administration and some parliamentarians.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said Mr. Berko, arranged for the Energy Company to funnel between $3 million to $4.5 million to a Ghana-based intermediary company “to bribe various government officials responsible for approving the Power Plant Project.”
It said the Ghana-based intermediary then made the payments to the government officials.
“From approximately 2015 through at least 2016 (the “relevant period”), while employed at the Subsidiary, 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”),” the SEC said.
The statement from the Presidency
