The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has urged the public not to assume that the conviction of former Goldman Sachs banker Asante Kwaku Berko in the United States automatically proves bribery allegations against individuals in Ghana.
Director of Strategy, Research and Communications at the OSP, Samuel Appiah Darko, said the US conviction provides important leads for Ghana’s investigation but does not, by itself, establish that specific individuals in the country received illicit payments.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Top Story on Wednesday, August 26, Mr Appiah Darko explained that evidence used in the US case must be subjected to Ghana’s own legal and evidentiary requirements before conclusions can be reached.
He said Berko’s conviction was based largely on evidence including emails, a personal ledger allegedly kept by him and testimony from a witness obtained with the assistance of the OSP.
According to him, however, an allegation contained in Berko’s records does not automatically mean the alleged transaction was independently proven in the US court.
He cited an alleged payment to Evans Mensah of Joy as an example, stressing that a claim recorded by Berko that money had been given to an individual would still have to be independently established under Ghanaian law.
Mr Appiah Darko said the OSP must therefore obtain direct and credible evidence to establish whether such payments were actually made and whether the individuals identified were involved in any wrongdoing.
He said the distinction was important because the burden of proving specific allegations in Ghana remained separate from the evidence that secured Berko’s conviction in the United States.
The OSP official’s comments follow the naming of five persons of interest in Ghana as part of the investigation into the local dimension of the Berko bribery case.
They include former Power Minister Kwabena Donkor; former Technical Adviser to the Minister of Power, Francis Walkson Kwesi Gyata; former Deputy Director at the Ministry of Power, Solomon Adjetey Sowah; former Director at Tricop Group Limited, Lindin George Nii Mettle; and Tricop Group employee Baffour Ankomah Brobbey.
Mr Appiah Darko appealed to the public to allow the OSP sufficient time to complete its investigations, stressing that complex corruption cases require extensive evidence gathering and resources.
He noted that the investigation into Berko in the United States reportedly lasted about six years, despite the substantial resources available to US authorities.
He also pointed to the extradition process from the United Kingdom to the United States, which he said took approximately one year.
He maintained that the OSP would carefully examine the available evidence before determining whether any person in Ghana should face criminal proceedings.
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