Afenyo-Markin threatens legal action as Minority seeks inquiry into US$1.7bn gold programme loss

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Ghana’s Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin says he will pursue legal remedies over statements he considers defamatory as the opposition intensifies demands for parliamentary scrutiny of a reported US$1.7 billion loss recorded by the Bank of Ghana under its Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.

ACCRA, Ghana | Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin says he will pursue legal remedies over statements he considers defamatory as Ghana’s opposition intensifies calls for a parliamentary inquiry into a reported US$1.7 billion loss recorded by the Bank of Ghana under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme in 2025.

The Minority wants the financial impact of the programme subjected to parliamentary scrutiny, including the Ghana Gold Board’s role in gold purchases undertaken for the central bank. GoldBod disputes attempts to attribute the Bank of Ghana’s reported loss to the institution, saying its role in the 2025 programme was limited to purchasing and aggregating gold as an agent for the central bank.

The increasingly personal confrontation between Afenyo-Markin and GoldBod Chief Executive Sammy Gyamfi has widened into a broader public-finance dispute over how the programme’s losses arose, how they should be accounted for and which institutions were responsible for the decisions behind the transactions.

Afenyo-Markin rejects allegations and signals legal action

Afenyo-Markin said in a statement that he had faced insults and personal attacks after questioning losses associated with the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme and GoldBod’s role in the transactions. He said allegations concerning his motives were false and argued that scrutinising the programme formed part of his responsibility as Minority Leader to help Parliament perform its constitutional oversight function.

“These allegations are entirely false, and I reject them without qualification,” he said.

Afenyo-Markin said he intended to pursue “appropriate legal remedies” over statements made about him personally.

His position is also recorded in local reports on the dispute. Nukunya had not identified a court filing arising from the latest exchange at the time of publication.

Minority calls for parliamentary inquiry

The political dispute has also moved beyond Afenyo-Markin’s personal response.

In a statement dated 22 August and signed by Deputy Minority Leader Patricia Appiagyei, the Minority Caucus called for GoldBod to appear before a parliamentary inquiry and for the financial results of the gold programme to be reconciled with GoldBod’s audited accounts.

The caucus said the losses had been identified in IMF reporting and argued that scrutiny of the programme constituted legitimate parliamentary oversight. It called for a “full and transparent reconciliation” of GoldBod’s audited financial statements with losses identified in the IMF material.

The Minority also said the public was entitled to know how much of the reported loss resulted from foreign-exchange differentials, the prices at which gold was bought and sold, discounts applied to purchases, who authorised those arrangements and what fees were earned from the transactions. Afenyo-Markin separately said the Minority would pursue parliamentary processes for what he described as a full inquiry into the reported loss.

What does the US$1.7bn figure represent?

The accounting distinction at the centre of the dispute is critical.

GoldBod itself has referred publicly to a US$1.7 billion loss recorded by the Bank of Ghana under the Domestic Gold Purchase Programme in 2025, while strongly disputing suggestions that the amount represents a GoldBod institutional loss.

GoldBod says its role under the 2025 arrangement was to purchase and aggregate gold for the central bank. Gyamfi said GoldBod was not involved in the subsequent sale of the gold, did not determine selling prices and was not a signatory to the relevant off-take agreements.

He also said approximately GH¢133 billion advanced to GoldBod for gold purchases in 2025 was fully accounted for. These are GoldBod’s claims about its role and financial stewardship.

The IMF has separately warned that the rapid expansion of domestic gold purchases created substantial financial and quasi-fiscal risks while helping Ghana build its international reserves. The central question is therefore not simply whether losses were associated with the programme, but how those losses were generated, how they should be classified and where responsibility for them lies.

Why are US$1.7bn and US$214m both being cited?

Two different figures have featured in discussion of the programme, and they should not be treated as interchangeable. GoldBod has referred to the reported US$1.7 billion Bank of Ghana DGPP loss for 2025 while arguing that it should not be attributed to GoldBod.

Separately, the IMF’s fifth review of Ghana’s Extended Credit Facility programme discussed losses associated with artisanal and small-scale mining doré gold transactions under the Gold-for-Reserves component.

The IMF reported US$214 million in losses through the end of the third quarter of 2025, mainly from trading losses, with GoldBod off-taker fees also contributing. The figures therefore have different scopes and reporting contexts and should not be presented as though they measure precisely the same thing.

This distinction is particularly important when assessing competing political claims about the programme.

GoldBod rejects responsibility for Bank of Ghana loss

Gyamfi has rejected attempts to characterise the reported Bank of Ghana loss as a loss by GoldBod. Speaking at the Government Accountability Series at Jubilee House on 19 August, he said the institution’s role under the 2025 DGPP was limited to purchasing and aggregating gold on behalf of the central bank.

GoldBod said it did not determine the subsequent selling price or terms and was not a party to the off-take agreements through which the gold was sold.

Gyamfi has also disputed claims that GoldBod’s fees explain the scale of the reported loss. According to GoldBod, it received a 0.258% assay fee and a 0.5% service fee, amounting to 0.758%. The IMF’s fifth-review report also records a 0.5% ad valorem service charge on Bank of Ghana purchases and a 0.258% assay fee. GoldBod maintains that its own statutory trading model did not begin until March 2026 and argues that the transactions undertaken in 2025 remained part of the Bank of Ghana’s programme.

GoldBod says its own accounts recorded a surplus

A separate issue concerns GoldBod’s own institutional financial performance.

Gyamfi says GoldBod recorded an operational surplus of about GH¢907 million and an overall surplus exceeding GH¢5.4 billion in 2025, citing its audited financial statements. He has used those figures to challenge attempts to characterise the Bank of Ghana’s reported DGPP loss as a loss incurred by GoldBod.

The two sets of figures are therefore not necessarily contradictory.

One concerns losses associated with the Bank of Ghana’s wider Domestic Gold Purchase Programme. The other concerns GoldBod’s reported institutional financial performance. Establishing precisely how the programme costs were generated, allocated and accounted for is one of the questions the Minority says should now be examined through parliamentary scrutiny.

IMF identifies benefits as well as financial risks

The financial debate also requires the programme’s stated policy objectives to be considered. The IMF has identified reserve accumulation as one of the benefits associated with the expansion of Ghana’s domestic gold purchasing programme.

Its fifth-review report said the scaling-up of the DGPP allowed the Bank of Ghana to meet its reserve-accumulation objectives and reach its 2028 reserve-coverage target in 2025. But the IMF also warned about commodity-price volatility, liquidity risks and the financial burden associated with the programme.

It said losses from the DGPP and GoldBod’s activities should not be borne by the central bank and should instead be transparently brought onto the government’s budget. Gyamfi argues that the losses should consequently be assessed alongside the programme’s macroeconomic objectives.

GoldBod says the DGPP was designed primarily as a foreign-exchange mobilisation and economic-stabilisation intervention rather than a conventional profit-making programme. That remains GoldBod’s interpretation of the programme’s costs and benefits. It does not resolve the separate questions about accounting, governance and responsibility that the Minority wants Parliament to investigate.

Personal dispute intensifies

The policy disagreement has become increasingly personal following exchanges between Afenyo-Markin and Gyamfi. Afenyo-Markin says attacks directed at him were intended to divert attention from substantive questions about the programme.

He has rejected allegations concerning his motives and says his attention remains focused on the decisions taken and the public funds involved.

The Minority Caucus has similarly accused GoldBod’s chief executive of directing personal characterisations at opposition MPs and says it intends to pursue what it describes as appropriate institutional channels.

The personal allegations remain contested.

Nukunya is reporting them solely as attributed claims made in an ongoing political dispute and does not present allegations made by either side as independently established facts.

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