Eric Nana Nipah, The Receiver
A TOTAL amount of approximately GH¢598 million, representing approximately 21 per cent, has been realized from the total assets of GH¢2.9 billion of the resolved institutions.
The Receiver is compelled to undertake a detailed asset tracing and forensics exercise in collaboration with the Economic and Organized Crime Organization (EOCO) to locate and recover these assets.
Expected realizations going forward would come from the sale of available landed properties and chattels. Phase two of the sale of assets (Landed and Chattels) commenced on July 9, 2020. The involvement of EOCO in the tracing of assets is key as also is the sale by private treaty.
The Asset Realizations phase, a key component of the receiverships, is currently underway albeit at a relatively slow pace. This is due mainly to the poor quality of assets of some of these institutions, asset diversion and misstatement of a significant number of assets of some of these companies in the financial records of these resolved companies.
Per the ranking of Creditor Claims as provided for under Section 135 of Act 930, the Receiver is supposed to pay secured creditors, i.e. claims secured against specific assets of the resolved company; and other allowed claims. These comprise outstanding obligations to statutory institutions i.e. SSNIT, GRA; employees’ entitlement (pre-receivership) i.e. outstanding obligations due to ex-employees prior to receivership i.e. outstanding salaries; employees’ entitlement (post-receivership) i.e. post receivership employees’ entitlements examples are negotiated and agreed exit packages; and unsecured creditors made up of the body of pre-receivership creditors, i.e. trade creditors, depositors etc.
GRA is yet to submit its claims but SSNIT has 244 submitted claims amounting to GH¢18 million.
The Receiver is expected to soon pay 5,637 employees claims amounting to GH¢131 million and unsecured claims of 484,145 amounting to GH¢8,534 billion. This makes 98.3% of the total number of claims. The afore-stated altogether added up to 490,026 claims totaling GH¢8.683 billion.
Special Scheme
BoG approved that a Special Scheme be designed to mitigate the plight of depositors of the defunct institutions. GoG has provided funding of approximately GH¢6.0 billion comprising of approximately GH¢2.0 billion cash and GH¢4.0 billion in bonds.
Validations
The Receiver has validated approximately GH¢1.07 billion out of approximately GH¢1.76 billion claims received after the extended deadline. Validation process is currently ongoing. The remaining claims to be validated is 16,000 in number which is worth GH¢330 million are due to the facts that there are no records on 36 institutions with claims amounting to approximately GH¢252 million while approximately GH¢74 million worth of claims are undergoing revalidation.
The DPS was implemented in two phases, i.e. payments of up to GH¢20,000 per depositor in Phase one and payments of outstanding claims based on a combination of cash and bonds in Phase two.
GoG initially provided GH¢1.1 billlion cash payment and based on this, GH¢20,000 payment was made to all depositors whose claim had been validated and agreed. The initial amount of GH¢20,000 was aimed at fully settling depositors with small balances to the extent possible. GoG provided additional funding through a combination of cash (GH¢1.0 billion) and bonds (GH¢4.0 billion) totaling approximately GH¢5 billion to the Receiver/OL to fully settle all outstanding claims.
Combining Phase one and one payments, approximately GH¢2.13 billion in cash have been paid to 330,000 depositors. Of the 330,000 depositors paid, approximately 320,000 individual depositor claims have been paid under both Phase one and Phase two of the DPS.
The additional cash payment will result in fully settling approximately 98% of all depositors whose claims have been validated.
Total Asset Base
The total asset base of the resolved institutions, per the management accounts, amounts to approximately GH¢2.9 billion, which according to the Receiver is doubtful. He has indicated he is in the process of ascertaining the actual position.
According to an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), an international accounting firm, the combined asset position of the 347 MFCs, 23 S&Ls and 39 MCCs realized GH¢1.4 billion in liquid assets, GH¢828 million in loans & advances, GH¢265 million in fixed assets and other assets amounting to GH¢386 million.
So far, the Receiver has been able to recover loans to the tune of GH¢44 million in cash; with Placements & Investments (including setoffs) totaling GH¢495 million; while balances transferred from other banks (closure of bank accounts) amounted to GH¢50 million; the sale of vehicles totaled GH¢4 million and Cash In Vault-(local & foreign currencies) was GH¢5 million making a total of GH¢598 million.
BY Samuel Boadi