Introduction and Central Thesis
A republic is not sustained by the comfort of its officials. It is sustained by institutions with the courage, discipline and independence to examine power when public money, public trust and public explanation are at stake.

This article advances a deliberately narrow constitutional argument. The GoldBod controversy should not be reduced to partisan accusation or defensive propaganda. It should be treated as a test of Ghana’s institutional capacity to reconcile public loss, public authority and public explanation under the discipline of evidence. The IMF-reported programme loss does not, by itself, prove criminal wrongdoing by GoldBod or any official. Equally, GoldBod’s asserted surplus does not answer the wider programme-level questions arising from the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme. The responsible democratic response is therefore neither vilification nor evasion. It is transparent reconciliation before Parliament.

The controversy surrounding the Ghana Gold Board, the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme and the questions raised by Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin should therefore be rescued from partisan hostility and placed where it properly belongs: in the disciplined realm of evidence, public finance, constitutional responsibility and due process.

Public accountability is not an act of aggression. It is the constitutional price of exercising public power.

The familiar weakness of political debate is its tendency to personalise institutional questions. It is easier to attack the questioner than to answer the question; easier to litigate motives in the court of public opinion than to reconcile figures before Parliament.

Yet history teaches that institutions are strengthened not by silence, but by scrutiny; and scrutiny begins with a willingness to follow the records wherever they lead.

I. The Documentary Record: What the IMF Found

For that reason, the analysis must begin with the documentary record rather than with the temperature of political rhetoric.

According to the IMF’s Ghana: Selected Issues, Country Report No. 26/213, the rapid expansion of the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme was associated with losses exceeding US$1.7 billion in 2025, equivalent to approximately 1.5 per cent of Ghana’s GDP. The same report explains that GoldBod fully assumed the programme’s operations and costs in July 2026. [1]

Paragraph 13 is particularly significant because it identifies the character of the loss. It reports that the losses were almost entirely connected with Gold-for-Reserves doré purchases and represented approximately 17 per cent of the value of doré gold sold by the Bank of Ghana.

The identified components included:

• service and assay fees paid to GoldBod;
• discounts on gold sold to off-takers; and
• exchange-rate differences between the rate used to purchase gold and the reference rate applied in the Bank of Ghana’s accounts. [2]

The IMF reportedly recognised that part of the amount reflected valuation effects rather than direct economic costs. Nevertheless, the Fund stated that the losses weakened the Bank of Ghana’s balance sheet. The reported figure also excluded the additional cost of sterilising liquidity associated with the programme. [2]

These findings do not establish criminal wrongdoing. They do, however, provide an objective and compelling basis for parliamentary scrutiny, because they identify a substantial programme-level loss within a state-administered mechanism involving public money, public institutions and public risk.

They are not figures manufactured by the Minority. They arise from IMF programme documentation and therefore deserve an institutional answer.

II. The Necessary Qualification: What the IMF Did Not Conclude

That record, however, must be read with intellectual honesty and legal restraint.

The IMF does not state that GoldBod independently incurred, caused or misappropriated the entire US$1.7 billion. The loss is attributed to the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme rather than recorded as a US$1.7 billion loss in GoldBod’s standalone financial statements.

A published fact-check reached the same essential conclusion: the figure reported by the IMF was real, but the loss rested within the Bank of Ghana’s programme, while GoldBod operated as a paid buying agent. [3]

GoldBod has relied on audited accounts reportedly showing an operational surplus of approximately GH¢907 million. It has also referred to an overall surplus of approximately GH¢5.4 billion, including GH¢4.5 billion described as government equity or revolving seed capital. [4]

That distinction is material and must be preserved throughout the analysis.

It does not, however, terminate the public-interest inquiry.

III. First Objection: The IMF Did Not Attribute the Entire Loss to GoldBod The objection is correct as far as it goes, but it is not complete.

The IMF located the loss within the wider programme administered through the Bank of Ghana. It did not pronounce GoldBod solely responsible for the entire amount.

Rebuttal
Correcting the accounting attribution does not dispose of the accountability question.

The IMF expressly identified service and assay fees paid to GoldBod, discounts granted to off-takers and exchange-rate effects as components of the programme loss. GoldBod’s exact operational role therefore remains a legitimate subject for inquiry. [2]

The responsible case is not that GoldBod has already been proved to have lost US$1.7 billion. The responsible case is that a state programme involving the Bank of Ghana and GoldBod generated a documented and exceptionally large loss requiring full institutional reconciliation.

Properly understood, the distinction strengthens the case for scrutiny because it identifies the precise question Parliament must answer: where did the loss arise, who authorised the relevant decisions, and where did the public burden finally rest?

IV. Second Objection: GoldBod’s Audited Accounts Show a Surplus

A second objection is that an institution reporting a surplus cannot credibly be associated with a multibillion-dollar programme loss.

Rebuttal
A corporate surplus and a programme-level public loss can coexist because they answer different accounting questions. One concerns the financial position of an entity; the other concerns the economic cost of a public programme and the distribution of that cost across the public financial system.

An agent may recognise service fees as income while the principal absorbs discounts, exchange-rate differences, financing expenses or wider policy costs. Conversely, receiving fees does not, without additional evidence, establish misconduct by the agent.

The relevant questions therefore remain:

• What income did GoldBod receive from the programme?
• What costs remained on the Bank of Ghana’s balance sheet?
• Who determined the purchasing and selling prices?
• How were off-takers selected?
• What discounts were granted, and under whose authority?
• What proportion of the loss was realised?
• What proportion represented valuation effects?
• Were the programme’s economic benefits proportionate to its financial cost?

A standalone surplus therefore cannot conclusively answer these questions.

Accounting shows where an entry sits. Constitutional law and public administration ask a deeper set of questions: who held authority, who made the decision, what mandate governed it, what safeguards applied, and whether the decision was lawful, rational and prudent.

Moving a loss from one state balance sheet to another does not make the economic burden disappear. Public money remains public money, and public risk remains public risk, irrespective of the institutional ledger on which the loss is recorded.

V. Third Objection: The Programme Supported Macroeconomic Stabilisation

The IMF acknowledged that the programme helped formalise artisanal gold exports, rebuild reserves and support foreign-exchange stabilisation during Ghana’s debt crisis. [5]

The programme’s defenders may therefore characterise the US$1.7 billion as a necessary policy cost rather than evidence of institutional failure.

Rebuttal
The answer is that public policy must be judged by both its claimed benefits and its measurable costs.

Macroeconomic stabilisation constitutes a material defence of the programme. It is not, however, an exemption from financial examination.

The proper inquiry is whether comparable benefits could have been secured at a lower cost, with narrower discounts, more efficient pricing, stronger internal controls or reduced quasi-fiscal exposure.

Describing a loss as a policy cost may explain its intended purpose. It does not automatically establish its reasonableness, proportionality, efficiency or necessity.

A policy may pursue a legitimate objective and still employ an unnecessarily expensive mechanism.

Public oversight exists precisely to distinguish necessary sacrifice from avoidable loss.

VI. Fourth Objection: The Minority Leader Should Have Confined Himself to Parliament

It has been argued that the Minority Leader should merely have read the IMF report, pursued parliamentary advocacy and initiated a formal inquiry.

Directly contacting GoldBod or the Bank of Ghana may consequently be portrayed as unnecessary, excessive or suspicious.

Rebuttal
The answer is that contact, by itself, is not culpability.

Seeking clarification from a public institution, regulator or official does not establish extortion. Such a serious allegation requires proof of the relevant act, demand, intention and surrounding circumstances.

Political misjudgment, procedural excess and criminal conduct are legally distinct propositions. The evidential distance between them cannot be crossed by suspicion, repetition or rhetorical force.

If communications exist, their complete content, chronology and context should be examined. Until then, neither professional status, political reputation nor media assertion can substitute for evidence.

VII. Constitutional Foundations of Parliamentary Scrutiny

The Minority Leader’s intervention must therefore be placed within Ghana’s constitutional framework, not merely within the noise of partisan controversy.

Articles 175 to 178 of the 1992 Constitution regulate public funds and restrict withdrawals from those funds to constitutionally or legislatively authorised purposes. Public money is therefore not the private property of the institution holding it. It is a national trust administered under law. [6]

The Public Financial Management Act, 2016, Act 921, reinforces this constitutional architecture through provisions governing parliamentary oversight, fiscal discipline, budgetary approval, performance reporting, public money, accounting and audit.

Relevant statutory provisions include:

• Section 11: parliamentary oversight;
• Section 22: approval of the annual budget by Parliament;
• Section 27: performance reporting;
• Section 34: reports on budget implementation; and
• Section 45: management and use of government money. [7]

Against this legal background, demanding an explanation for a programme loss equivalent to 1.5 per cent of GDP is not political trespass. It is consistent with Parliament’s constitutional responsibility to scrutinise the management, allocation and consequences of public expenditure.

The opposition does not discharge its constitutional function by accepting convenient explanations.

Its duty is to interrogate them carefully, responsibly and fearlessly.

VIII. Parliamentary Privilege, Responsible Speech and Institutional Discipline The Constitution protects Parliament’s ability to perform that function

Article 115 safeguards freedom of speech, debate and proceedings in Parliament. Article 116 generally protects members against external civil or criminal proceedings concerning matters brought before Parliament through petitions, bills, motions or otherwise. The same article provides an internal parliamentary process for addressing statements considered prima facie defamatory. [8]

These protections are not personal indulgences granted to members of Parliament. They protect Parliament’s institutional capacity to scrutinise government without intimidation, while leaving Parliament itself responsible for maintaining discipline, fairness and accuracy in the exercise of that freedom.

Nevertheless, privilege is not a licence for recklessness. Its noblest purpose is to protect rigorous inquiry, not premature condemnation.

The strongest defence of the Minority Leader is therefore not political sympathy. It is accuracy. The IMF identified a substantial programme loss and expressly referred to fees paid to GoldBod among its components. That evidence justifies investigation, but it does not by itself establish personal criminal liability.

IX. Extortion Allegations and the Requirements of Due Process

An allegation remains an allegation until it is established by admissible evidence before the proper institutional forum.

The submission of petitions, the commencement of an assessment or the circulation of a media report does not amount to a judicial finding. An investigation is not an indictment, and an indictment is not a conviction.

Equally, the commencement of defamation proceedings proves neither innocence nor liability. Courts exist precisely because constitutional societies refuse to permit accusation to mature into judgment without evidence.

Those alleging extortion must prove the constituent elements of the allegation. Those disputing the IMF’s financial analysis must answer the programme-level figures through transparent reconciliation.

Neither side should invite public indignation to perform the work of evidence, accounting reconciliation or constitutional judgment.

X. Financial Scrutiny Is Not Criminalisation

There must also be a principled distinction between financial scrutiny and criminal culpability.

A public institution may incur an accounting loss without its officials committing a crime. A valuation loss is not automatically theft. An exchange-rate difference is not automatically corruption. A costly policy is not necessarily unlawful.

Civil or criminal liability requires evidence satisfying the elements of a recognised cause of action or offence. Suspicion cannot substitute for proof.

By the same principle, however, an audited surplus cannot function as a complete answer to a wider programme loss if material costs were carried elsewhere in the public financial system.

The legal task is to trace authority, decisions, benefits, costs and responsibility without evading scrutiny or presuming guilt.

XI. The Constitutional Danger of Trying the Questioner

Political debate becomes impoverished whenever motive replaces substance.

One may disagree with the Minority Leader’s language, strategy or accounting attribution. But disagreement does not erase the IMF’s US$1.7 billion finding.

Similarly, criticism of GoldBod cannot justify presuming dishonesty or criminality on the part of its officials.

A mature democracy must be capable of holding two principles at once:

• public officials must not be convicted through allegation; and
• documented public losses must not be insulated from scrutiny.

This is not indecision or fence-sitting. It is fidelity to the rule of law.

Democracy does not decay because difficult questions are asked. It decays when questioning authority becomes politically dangerous, socially punishable or institutionally futile.

Those who manage public resources are entitled to fairness. They are not entitled to freedom from scrutiny.

Opposition leaders are entitled to ask questions. They are not entitled to disregard evidence or pronounce guilt without proof.

The disciplined constitutional position lies between these extremes. It neither canonises the questioner nor demonises the officials under scrutiny. It allows the records to speak.

XII. Terms of Reference for a Credible Parliamentary Inquiry

A credible parliamentary inquiry should neither sensationalise nor sanitise the US$1.7 billion figure. It should reconcile it with documentary precision by examining the following matters:

1. the gold-purchasing agreements;
2. the off-taker agreements;
3. the identities and selection procedures of off-takers;
4. the discounts granted and the authority under which they were approved;
5. service and assay fees paid to GoldBod;
6. purchasing and selling prices;
7. the exchange-rate methodology employed;
8. realised losses and accounting valuation effects;
9. financing and sterilisation costs;
10. the allocation of financial risk between GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana;
11. the internal approvals and institutional controls applied;
12. the measurable macroeconomic benefits produced by the programme; and
13. whether those benefits were obtained at a reasonable and proportionate public cost.

Such an inquiry must be professional, forensic, transparent and free from partisan prejudgment.

If the evidence vindicates the programme and its officials, that conclusion should be stated without qualification. If the evidence reveals avoidable losses, defective controls, imprudent decisions or improper conduct, accountability must follow with equal clarity.

XIII. Conclusion: Let the Ledger Speak

The conclusion follows from the structure of the argument. The deepest obligation of an opposition is not to oppose reflexively. It is to ensure that government explains what power has done with the public trust.

The corresponding obligation of government is not to resent scrutiny. It is to answer scrutiny with records, reasons and candour.

Truth does not fear an audit. Integrity does not resent a question.

In the republic of evidence, no individual should be condemned by allegation. But no public loss should be allowed to disappear behind institutional boundaries, political outrage or convenient accounting language.

Afenyo-Markin may ultimately be proved correct in some respects and mistaken in others. That is the nature of genuine inquiry. The legitimacy of asking questions does not depend upon every provisional argument surviving examination. It rests upon the existence of a credible public concern demanding an institutional answer.

The Constitution does not require silence until certainty arrives. It requires institutions capable of pursuing certainty through lawful, disciplined and transparent scrutiny.

Those who ask difficult questions are not invariably right. But a republic that discourages difficult questions is almost certainly travelling in the wrong constitutional direction.

The constitutional answer is neither persecution nor propaganda.

It is disclosure, due process and accountability.

And in every enduring democracy, accountability begins with the courage to ask — and the discipline to answer.

Sources and References

1. International Monetary Fund, Ghana: Selected Issues, Country Report No. 26/213 (August 2026), including “Lessons from the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.” https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/cr/2026/english/1ghaea2026002.pdf
2. IMF Country Report No. 26/213, paragraph 13, as reproduced and discussed in contemporary reporting on the DGPP loss components. https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2026/213/article-A001-en.xml
3. JoyNews Research, “Fact-check: Did GoldBod make a loss in 2025? Here’s what the records show” (20 August 2026). https://www.myjoyonline.com/fact-check-did-goldbod-make-a-loss-in2025-heres-what-the-records-show/
4. Daily Graphic, “GoldBod recorded GH¢5.4bn surplus in 2025, not losses – Sammy Gyamfi” (19 August 2026). https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/goldbod-recorded-ghc5-4bnsurplus-in-2025-not-losses-sammy-gyamfi.html
5. International Monetary Fund, “Lessons from the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme,” Selected Issues Paper No. 2026/084. https://www.imf.org/en/publications/selectedissues-papers/issues/2026/08/07/lessons-from-the-bank-of-ghana-s-domestic-gold-purchaseprogramme-578681
6. Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, Articles 175–178. https://judicial.gov.gh/index.php/finance
7. Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921), especially sections 11, 22, 27, 34 and 45. https://ghalii.org/akn/gh/act/2016/921/eng@2016-08-26
8. Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, Articles 115–116, parliamentary freedom of speech, privileges and immunities.

About the Author
Sam Kwesi Andoh is the Executive Director of SKA Legal Consult Ltd.

He holds a BA (Hons) in Philosophy, a Postgraduate Diploma in Law (PGDL), an MA in Law. He has also undertaken professional legal studies on the Legal Practice Course (LPC), and MA in Education Leadership.

He holds advanced-level (IAA Level 3) continuing professional development certifications in:

• Deprivation of Citizenship
• Deportation
• Judicial Review for Immigration Lawyers
• Costs in Immigration Cases
• Urgent Injunction Applications

He has additionally completed multiple advanced legal update courses.

His professional and scholarly work focuses on constitutional law, governance, immigration, family law, litigation, human rights, public policy and institutional development.