The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) says it raised concerns about Ghana’s agreement with Turkish energy company AKSA Enerji as far back as 2015, years before the conviction of former Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) Managing Director Asante Kwaku Berko in the United States.
Mr Berko, a former Goldman Sachs banker and former TOR Managing Director, was convicted by a US federal jury over his involvement in a bribery scheme involving Ghanaian government officials in connection with efforts to secure approvals for an AKSA power plant project.
Speaking on Accra-based Channel One TV, ACEP Executive Director Benjamin Boakye said the organisation had consistently raised questions about how the AKSA agreement and other Independent Power Producer (IPP) contracts were negotiated.
“We have had no doubt in our minds since 2015, and you track all the writings, all the publications we’ve done on some of these IPPs. We have always been worried about how these contracts were signed, and we knew something was wrong,” he said.
Mr Boakye explained that ACEP’s concerns were largely based on the structure of some of the power contracts, particularly those negotiated under Ghana’s emergency power procurement arrangements.
He said, however, that the organisation could not have anticipated the extent to which alleged financial inducements may have influenced decisions surrounding some of the agreements.
“But we couldn’t figure out that it was just mere one million, 5,000, 20,000 that could make people sacrifice national duty to undermine our collective purpose and interest at that scale,” he said.
Mr Boakye acknowledged that Ghana’s power crisis at the time required urgent measures but stressed that the need for quick solutions should not come at the expense of the country’s interests.
“If you look at how these IPPs were contracted, and we talk about emergency and everything, I mean, emergency requires emergency solutions, and it requires emergency approach in procurement,” he said.
According to him, the conviction of Mr Berko should trigger a broader review of Ghana’s power procurement arrangements to determine whether existing contracts adequately safeguard the country’s financial interests.
Mr Boakye has therefore called for the AKSA agreements to be revisited, saying the latest developments provide an opportunity to examine how the contracts were negotiated and whether sufficient safeguards were put in place.
His comments come amid renewed scrutiny of the AKSA power deal and the processes through which the project was negotiated and approved.
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