Five Managing Directors of the dissolved banks: L-R: Stephen Kpordzih (Construction Bank) Osei Asafo – Adjei (Royal Bank) , Johan Rheeder (Sovereign Bank) , Mike Nyinaku (Beige Bank) and Dr Duffuor II (uniBank)
The Christian Council of Ghana has called for the prosecution of all persons whose actions and inactions resulted in the collapse of some indigenous banks in the country.
Speaking at the 2018 Synod of the Global Evangelical in Accra, General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Cyril Fayose said the Bank of Ghana’s decision to merge the five struggling local banks into a new entity known as the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited was laudable.
Two other banks, Capital Bank and UT Bank also had their licences revoked by the Central Bank a year earlier.
He said the persons responsible for the collapse of these banks must be made to face the full rigors of the law especially as their actions have taken a serious financial toll on the country.
“The Christian Council wants to commend the governor of the Bank of Ghana and his team for exposing the rot in the banking system in Ghana and for actually closing down seven of the banks. We also want to place on record that the Christian Council of Ghana thinks that all those who are culpable in this matter, be they staff of the Bank of Ghana or directors of the closed banks should be prosecuted.
“They should face the full rigors of the law as much as possible because the amount of money we hear has gone into this bailing out of these banks is enough to do a lot of social interventions in our country, Rev. Fayose said.
The Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison recently revoked the licenses of five banks; Sovereign bank, Beige Bank, Construction Bank, Royal Bank and uniBank.
He said the banks had committed various offenses against the country’s banking laws including obtaining their licenses through false pretenses.
The governor said the five had therefore been collapsed into a new bank; the Consolidated Bank of Ghana and deposits of the collapsed banks had been transferred to the Consolidated Bank.
The banks collapsed despite the fact that the Bank of Ghana had supported them with hundreds of millions of cedis to enable them to recover from distress.
Their collapse has however resulted in the state incurring more cost in fixing the mess created.
This has increased public agitation as some of those said to be complicit in the mismanagement of the banks pocketed funds, leading to their eventual collapse.
-Citifmonline