New Patriotic Party (NPP) communicator Kofi Tonto has rejected claims linking him to an alleged fraudulent scheme at Ghana’s Embassy in Washington, insisting that a small payment he received years ago was a legitimate child benefit and not proceeds of any wrongdoing.
In a statement, Mr Tonto said he had become aware of an online story alleging that he received US$800 out of a purported US$19 million obtained through fraud at the embassy.
The report, he noted, linked the claims to a forensic audit by the Ghana Audit Service covering the embassy’s affairs from 2017 to 2025.
“I wish to state that I have never been involved in any scheme, the sharing of, or the receipt of any ill-obtained funds,” he said.
Mr Tonto stressed that he was not named as a person of interest in the audit report.
The US$800 he received in July 2021, he explained, was a lawful child benefit paid after the birth of his daughter in January 2021.
“To the best of my knowledge and recollection, the payment of child benefit package is a standard practice that preceded me, as one will find in the same report that about 28 other staff members also received benefits for various life-changing reasons,” he said.
He argued that a one-time payment he neither solicited nor determined, nor controlled the bank account for, could not fairly be used to portray him as complicit in an alleged multi-million-dollar scheme.
Mr Tonto, who served as Head of Information and Public Affairs at the embassy between March 2019 and July 2021, said all compensations, allowances, benefits and refunds he received during that period were paid through established processes.
“I was never involved in decisions relating to the financial management of the Embassy, especially those involving the operation or closure of any bank account,” he added.
He urged his family, friends, admirers, and the general public to disregard what he described as a distorted narrative being pushed to falsely attribute wrongdoing to him.
Also read:
