KT Hammond, a former Adansi Asokwa Member of Parliament, has reacted to the conviction of Kwaku Asante Berko and the alleged $46,000 bribe said to have been paid to parliamentarians to aid the ratification of the agreement between Ghana and AKSA Energy in 2014 and 2015
The former Adansi Asokwa MP, who at the time served as the Ranking Member on the Energy Committee of Parliament in 2014 and 2015 during the period when the court proceedings in the US stated that Berko and his associates discussed paying bribes to Ghanaian officials, including parliamentarians.
According to KT Hammond, is he that bloody cheap to share $46,000 with 17 MPs on the Energy Committee?
He argued that the most repugnant aspect of suggest that he shared $46,000 with 17 other members on the parliamentary committee.
KT Hammond questioned how 18 MPs, together with their secretariat staff, could share $46,000, which meant each member was, on average, going to get $500 or $1,000?
Speaking on Citi FM, KT Hammond said, “For the sake of all that is making the rounds, people are taking one million…, and then the suggestion is that K.T. Hammond, and his [committee] we took about, $500 [each], because the money is supposed to be $30,000. Then you hear $10,000 somewhere, then some $6,000; they round it up to $46,000”.
“We had 18 people in Parliament (Members on the Energy Committee), and then the Secretariat and all of that; are they suggesting we shared that and each person got about $500 or $1000 or something?”
“Is K.T, Hammond that bloody cheap? Is that it?” he questioned.
He added, “Oh, uh, don’t ask me any more questions on that because you upset me. I have absolutely told you that my committee had absolutely no knowledge about that. We do know that the document came to Parliament for ratification. What we do in Parliament is not a sale of documentation or not a sale of any business.
Our mandated duty is to scrutinise documents and make sure that… think about it, we are only 28. We get 48, we only scrutinise and eventually take the document to the plenary of over 270 whatever people, 75, 76, so we take $46,000 for 30 something, and then what happens to the rest of the plenary, I mean, does this make sense?”
Meanwhile, KT Hammond has said his client, the former Power Minister Dr Kwabena Donkor, did not receive any money from convicted former Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) Managing Director and Goldman Sachs banker Asante Kwaku Berko.
He argued that allegations by US authorities against convicted Asante Berko do not establish that former Power Minister Dr Kwabena Donkor received any money.
KT Hammond highlighted that evidence presented in the United States case involving Mr Berko did not directly link his client to any alleged bribe.
According to KT Hammond, Dr Donkor acknowledged that he was the Minister responsible for Power in 2015 during the ASKA power project discussion, but had categorically denied receiving any inducement.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Monday, August 10, 2026, KT Hammond stated, “He instructs me to say that he has never in his life made eye contact with that person,” Mr Hammond said, referring to Mr Berko.
“More importantly, his instructions are that he categorically denies knowing anything about any form of inducement, any money, dollars, cedis, whatever. He has absolutely no clue what is being talked about.”
“For the Americans and for the purpose of that prosecution, it simply means that he was involved in a kind of bribery from his own evidence,” Mr Hammond said.
“But when you then take out the individuals, I don’t get the impression that the fact that somebody said that I was going to give me some money, first of all I’m going to hand it over to this other person, constitutes an evidential basis for an allegation, serious allegation of criminality.”
KT Hammond rejected suggestions that Kwabena Donkor should be implicated simply because he was the Minister responsible for the Power Ministry at the time of the ASKA project.
Background
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 document, however, did not provide any names but provided institutions connected to AKSA Enerji’s emergency power project bribe.
The court document detailed that Asante Berko and his co-conspirators paid and conspired to pay bribes to individuals at various levels of the Ghanaian government to ensure that the said company AKSA won its bid to build and operate the power plant.
@ghnow_ There are issues in every family, I call my sister (Adwoa Safo) “Sokode” – Akofenya speaks #GHNow #fyp ♬ original sound – GHnow
@ghnow_ “I take all the blame, I am sorry for this disgrace to my father”- Akofena Speaks #GHNow #fyp ♬ original sound – GHnow
