The Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) has called for a forensic audit of the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) over what it suspects to be fiscal recklessness, opaque expenditure and potential conflict-of-interest concerns.
Speaking at a news conference in Accra yesterday, a leading member of AFAG, Dr Samuel Kwadwo Frimpong, said the state-backed gold-buying institution’s 2025 audited accounts raised serious questions about its financial management and corporate governance.
According to him, GoldBod recorded total expenditure of GH¢78.68 million in 2025, with several expenditure items running into millions of cedis.
He cited GH¢14.29 million spent on task force deployment, GH¢3.98 million on entertainment and events, GH¢3.39 million on travelling costs and GH¢5.26 million on special intervention programme expenses.
Dr Frimpong questioned the basis for the expenditure, arguing that the descriptions of some of the items did not provide sufficient information to establish whether the spending represented value for money.
He said AFAG was particularly concerned about the GH¢8.58 million allocated to legal and professional fees.
The group raised questions about reports that substantial payments under the item had been made to a law firm associated with some of the GoldBod’s top management members.
GoldBod has denied those reports
Nevertheless, Dr Frimpong said the expenditure required further scrutiny and asked whether GoldBod had an adequately staffed legal department and, if so, why such a substantial amount had been spent on external legal and professional services.
He also demanded details of the specific legal services that accounted for the GH¢8.58 million and the identities of the law firms or individuals who received the payments.
AFAG, he said, would undertake a multi-part analysis of GoldBod’s 2025 and 2026 audited accounts, together with relevant International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy reports, as part of efforts to inform the public about the financial position and operations of the institution.
The group further called on the Auditor-General and Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to conduct an immediate forensic audit into the expenditure items it had flagged.
It also urged President John Dramani Mahama to intervene to prevent what it described as further fiscal dissipation and demand accountability from the leadership of GoldBod.
Dr Frimpong said the call was aimed at promoting transparency, probity and value for money in the management of public resources.
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