Doing compliance is like flying a plane—one usually only hears about it when the plane crashes. But Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has a compliance team that steered it away from an alleged bribery scheme, and regulators noticed.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Asante Berko, a former executive of a bank subsidiary in the U.K., on April 13 with orchestrating a $3 million scheme to help a client win a government contract in Ghana. Berko has denied wrongdoing in a statement, and his attorney, Carl “Chip” Loewenson Jr. of Morrison & Foerster in New York, declined to comment on Friday.