Nana Appiah Mensah
Contempt for the country’s laws could not have been better exhibited than Menzgold Company Limited did a couple of days ago. In their response to a Bank of Ghana (BOG) query for allegedly collecting deposits from their customers in breach of their operating licence, Menzgold resorted to describing the issue raised as a joke.
Blimey; BOG is a state institution and therefore deserving of a modicum of respect from us all more so when Menzgold is an alleged defaulter.
To crown the insulting remarks with reference to the collapsed banks in a sarcastic fashion is most intolerable.
We are not disputing the fact that the regulator of banking activities in the country and the banker of last resort was caught napping when entities like Menzgold licensed to deal in commodities veered outside their remit. That deviation is part of the many infractions which brought the country to its knees and which government is struggling to put right.
We mentioned it in an earlier commentary that BOG should have long cracked the whip on companies like Menzgold and others for breaching the laws of the land. Contravening the directives of the apex bank is tantamount to breaking the laws of the country.
The commodities trading company has the effrontery to be this insolent because of the long slumber the apex bank has been in for the past years.
Now fitted with effective rudder, the apex bank is moving the banking sector from the choppy waters of the country’s finance visited on it by the years of the previous political order.
Never again should the apex bank suffer so much political interference to the extent of shirking its core responsibility of ensuring that only qualified entities are licensed to operate in the banking space.
We witnessed gross irresponsibility on those at the helm of affairs of the apex bank – the fallouts varied as they include the irresponsible remarks from the ilk of Menzgold.
A newly fitted BOG does not joke and takes its work serious but for which it could not have unearthed the breaches which now make the headlines.
If there is any joke about the banking sector, it is what Menzgold through its CEO spewed on his twitter. This company has charted a smelly course in responding to state agencies’ queries. This should not be encouraged at all lest it becomes a norm.
State institutions should wake up to their responsibilities better than we have witnessed when the NDC was in charge. We have just learned about the Precious Minerals Marketing Company Limited (PMMC) also denying licensing Menzgold to deal in gold.
How come therefore that the company appears to have been doing that? The PMMC was also sleeping on duty. Otherwise Menzgold could not have operated outside its remits for this long. For the PMMC to come out now to expose Menzgold is to ridicule itself as a corporate entity not living up to its responsibilities.
A private limited liability company has taken both the BOG and the PMMC to the cleaners in a manner which we find unacceptable.
Let those in charge of probing this issues do so with the national interest at heart so that such irresponsible remarks would cease forthwith.