The Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, has announced what he describes as a “rebirth” of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) following a unanimous Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the office's prosecutorial mandate.
The Special Prosecutor has, therefore, set in motion an investigation into the Ghana dimension of the US$1 million bribery case linked to former Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Kwaku Asante Berko, who was convicted in the United States earlier this August.
Mr Berko was convicted of conspiring to pay more than $1 million in bribes to multiple Ghanaian officials between 2014 and 2015, in connection with the development and financing of a 370-megawatt fuel oil plant in Tema, under a deal between Ghana and Turkish energy firm Aksa Enerji Uretim A.S., a Goldman Sachs client.
Persons of interest
Addressing a news conference in Accra Wednesday (Aug 26. 2026), the Special Prosecutor named five people as persons of interest in the investigation.
They are former Minister of Power Dr Kwabena Donkor; Ghanaian energy expert and former Technical Adviser to the Minister of Power, Francis Woolley-Kwesi Dzata; former Deputy Director at the ministry, Solomon Asiedu-Asare; a Director at Tricorp Group Limited, an energy solutions and multifaceted engineering services, Lyndon Goerge Nii Saul Mettle and Baffuor Ankoma Brobbey, an employee of the same company.
The other persons of interest include some current and former employees of the Volta River Authority, Ghana Grid Company Limited, the Electricity Company of Ghana, the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission, and staff of the former Ministry of Power.
The Special Prosecutor said the OSP had provided investigative and evidentiary assistance to the FBI through Ghana's mutual legal assistance framework, work the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged as "significant."
Related article: OSP on how it assisted FBI 'behind the scenes' in getting Kwaku Asante Berko convicted for bribing Ghanaian officials
He dismissed suggestions that the OSP lacked the competence to investigate the domestic dimension of the case, and called for greater inter-agency cooperation among investigative bodies.
Read also: Deputy AG Srem-Sai on why EOCO and not OSP is leading AKSA/Asante Berko bribery probe
Mr Kissi Agyebeng said Mr Berko's U.S. conviction did not, on its own, establish criminal liability in Ghana, adding that the OSP would not prosecute anyone solely because their name appeared in the U.S. proceedings, but would not hesitate to do so where the evidence supported it.
Defence
Mr Agyebeng invited critics who held the view that the OSP should be scrapped to carefully analyse the OSP’s track record over the years.
“To those who say the OSP is ineffective, your claims are testable. You are respectfully invited to check the statistics of our performance and benchmark them against your preferred institution, taking into account mandate, year of establishment, resources, complexity of cases and legal constraints. If done dispassionately, it would occur to you that the OSP has performed creditably,” he said.
Further defending the OSP's record, Mr Agyebeng said that as of December 31, 2025, the office was prosecuting 33 persons, had 79 cases at full investigation and 161 at preliminary investigation, and had secured seven convictions through court-sanctioned plea agreements.
He said the OSP had recovered GH¢8.518 million and US$2 million in cash, alongside other movable and immovable assets, and credited the office with safeguarding the Tema Oil Refinery and reforming the customs and government payroll systems.
He also renewed calls for expanded anti-corruption powers, including non-conviction-based asset recovery and a reverse-onus lifestyle audit regime for unexplained wealth.
