Over the years, Ghana’s Parliament has been rocked by several allegations of bribery involving Members of Parliament (MPs) fingered in bribery scandals in the performance of its oversight and legislative duties.
The controversy surrounding the AKSA power deal and the conviction of former Tema Oil Refinery Managing Director, Asante Berko, have once again brought the issue of alleged influence peddling and corruption into the spotlight.
In this article, we revisit some of the major bribery allegations that have rocked Parliament over the years, cases in which investigations were launched but which, despite the public attention they generated, remain unresolved.
Appointments Committee bribery scandal in 2017
Back in January 2017, Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga, alleged that each member of the Appointments Committee of Parliament (ACP) was given a GH¢3,000 bribe.
He revealed that the bribe was paid by the then Minister-designate for Energy, Boakye Agyarko, to facilitate his vetting.
The Bawku Central MP, in a radio interview in 2017, alleged that Alhaji Mohammed-Mubarak had given GH¢3,000 to each minority member on the ACP.
According to Mahama Ayariga, Alhaji Mohammed-Mubarak told him that it was Joseph Osei-Owusu who had given the money to him, with the explanation that it was from Agyarko.
He revealed that, together with his fellow Minority MPs, he returned the money because they had initially thought it was a sitting allowance.
However, Alhaji Mohammed-Mubarak denied the allegation, and a five-member committee was later instituted to investigate the matter.
Unknown businessman bribery allegation
In 2022, members of the Majority Caucus of Parliament were fingered for being involved in an attempted bribery by an unknown businessman.
According to the allegation, the businessman tried to bribe some NPP members of parliament who were demanding that then President Akufo-Addo remove the then Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.
Some NPP members of parliament, including Andy Appiah Kubi, acknowledged the bribery attempt but did not disclose the name of the businessman.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) opened an investigation into the matter in 2023 but later stated that the investigation had been concluded and closed.
The OSP disclosed that the businessman had indeed attempted to offer money, but the MPs rejected it.
Embattled Adu-Boahene GH¢960,000 ‘allowances’ to MPs
The former Director of the National Signals Bureau (NSB), Kwabena Adu-Boahene, who is facing a court trial for misappropriating GH¢49 million of funds, alleged that GH¢960,000 of the money was used to pay allowances to MPs on the fence and Interior Committee to facilitate the passage of the National Signals Bureau Act (2020).
Adu-Boahene, in a letter, provided a summary of “Special Operations Expenditure” during the sensitive transition period.
In the letter, he detailed that the GH¢960,000 payment was part of expenditures for the 2020/2021 fiscal year, specifically for the enactment of the NSB Act 2020.
AKSA Turkish power plant bribery scandal
The former TOR MD Asante Berko was convicted by a federal jury in the United States over a bribery and money laundering scheme linked to a power plant project in Ghana.
Asante Kwaku Berko, a dual US-Ghanaian citizen, was convicted in Brooklyn on August 6, 2026, on all counts in the indictment, following a nine-day trial before US District Judge Diane Gujarati in the Eastern District of New York.
According to information gathered, Asante Berko and others conspired to pay more than US$1 million in bribes to Ghanaian government officials to help secure a multimillion-dollar power plant deal for Turkish energy company AKSA Enerji Uretim A.S.
The shady deal centres on a power plant deal that was under development and financing between December 2014 and July 2015.
However, details provided by US court documents disclosed that several Ghanaian officials allegedly received bribes to facilitate a power plant deal during Ghana’s power crisis in 2014 and 2015.
The US court documents further indicate that members of Ghana’s Parliament were among the alleged recipients of bribes.
They disclosed that in August 2015, Berko and his co-conspirators discussed $250,000 in bribe payments to various individuals, including $46,000 to Members of the Ghanaian Parliament who had ratified the agreement between Aksa and the Government of Ghana, revealing that payment to the MPs was made by Berko himself.
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