Deputy Attorney General Dr Justice Srem-Sai has cautioned against calls for the immediate cancellation of the AKSA power deal following the conviction of a former Goldman Sachs banker in the United States for bribery.

Speaking exclusively to JoyNews’ Evans Mensah, Dr Srem-Sai said although he understood concerns over the deal, the government could expose the state to a judgment debt if it terminated the agreement without first establishing the legal basis for doing so.

“The law doesn't work that way. You can take a decision which will become a judgment-debt issue,” he said.

He explained that the government would instead have to undertake a comprehensive review of the agreement to determine whether the circumstances surrounding the bribery conviction provide grounds for invalidating the contract.

“So what we will do is to review the entire agreement and see to what extent it could be vitiated by what happened,” he said.

Dr Srem-Sai also cautioned against treating bribery and fraud as interchangeable legal concepts.

“Bribery is not actually fraud. You know that at least from the eyes of the law there is a different meaning when you say bribery and there's fraud — these are two different legal concepts,” he explained.

According to him, if investigations establish that the contract was procured through fraud, that could provide grounds for the agreement to be invalidated.

However, he stressed that such a conclusion must be based on evidence gathered through proper investigations.

“If it was procured through fraud, then it vitiates the entire contract,” he said.

The Deputy AG maintained that the government could not simply cancel the agreement because an individual connected to the transaction had been convicted of paying bribes.

“I understand that yes they want it to be cancelled, but I also want to let them understand that from a lawyer's perspective, you cannot just cancel a contract because someone has been convicted of paying a bribe,” he said.

Dr Srem-Sai said further due diligence would be required before any decision is taken on the future of the AKSA agreement.

“You need to do further diligence to be able to come to that conclusion,” he said.

He added that the government would be advised after investigators had established the relevant facts.

“And I believe that will be done once the investigations are concluded and the facts are well established, we will advise the government,” he said.

The comments follow calls from civil society groups for the government to cancel the AKSA deal following the US conviction.

Some have argued that termination of the agreement should be a natural consequence of the bribery case.

Dr Srem-Sai, however, said the government must first establish the legal consequences of the conviction for the contract before taking action.

The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) is leading Ghana’s local investigations into the matter, with the Attorney General’s Office coordinating aspects of Ghana’s engagement with US authorities.