Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker Asante Berko was extradited to New York from the UK to face federal charges that he orchestrated bribes to Ghanaian officials while employed at the investment bank.

Berko pleaded not guilty on Tuesday afternoon in the Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York, after arriving in the US the night before. US magistrate judge Vera Scanlon agreed to release Berko on US$600,000 bond, though he will remain under house arrest with electronic monitoring at the Manhattan home of his sister-in-law.

He is due back in court for a conference on Aug 14.

Berko’s extradition comes four years after the onetime Goldman vice president was charged in a 2020 indictment filed by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York. They accused him of conspiring with at least two officials of the West African nation and four others in a bribery scheme they say benefited Goldman, himself and a Turkish energy company that sought to build a power plant in Ghana.

Berko has been in British custody since since his 2022 arrest at London’s Heathrow Airport. In May his lawyers argued that a court order to extradite him should be dismissed, contending the charges weren’t extradition offenses and that most of the alleged acts took place in London, but they failed to stop his transfer.

Berko was a member of the Goldman team responsible for securing and managing financing for the power plant project, according to the indictment. The US alleges that Berko paid bribes to obtain approvals for the Turkish company, in which Goldman held a 16% stake. Prosecutors also claim he laundered the bribe money through US financial institutions.

Boyd Johnson, a lawyer for Berko, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on the extradition.

Goldman, which wasn’t accused of wrongdoing in the matter, has been entangled in foreign bribery cases before, most famously the looting of Malaysian state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB). In that case, it agreed to pay more than US$5 billion, including a US$2.3 billion fine in the US, and its Malaysian unit entered a guilty plea, a first for the firm. It was the largest penalty in US history for a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Berko was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2020 over the same basic alleged conduct. He resolved that lawsuit by agreeing to pay more than US$329,000 to regulators without admitting or denying the allegations, court records show. 

According to the SEC, Berko was a vice president in Goldman’s natural resources group before he resigned in December 2016. He went on to serve as the managing director of Ghana’s state-owned Tema Oil Refinery Ltd, but stepped down after the SEC suit was filed.

US authorities say Berko hid the alleged scheme from Goldman’s compliance department. The bank has said it cooperated fully with the SEC’s investigation.

The case is US v Berko, 20-cr-0238, US District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).

  - Bloomberg