Dr. Johnson Asiama
The Office of the Attorney General has withdrawn all charges against a former 2nd Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Johnson Asiama, for his alleged role in the collapse of UT Bank and uniBank.
Dr. Asiamah had been charged alongside Dr. Kwabena Duffuor over alleged ‘dishonest’ spending of funds belonging to customers and investors of the defunct bank.
uniBank Ghana Limited, a private bank founded by Dr. Duffuor who once served as Governor of the Bank of Ghana, as well as UT Bank founded by Kofi Amoanbeng, were two of the insolvent financial institutions that were closed down by the government during the banking sector clean-up exercise between 2017 and 2018.
Dr. Asiamah was charged on two counts of breach of Section 46(h) of the Bank of Ghana Act, 2002 (Act 612) and Section 46A of the Bank of Ghana (Amendment) Act, 2016 (Act 918) (ii) causing financial loss to the state.
He pleaded not guilty to all two counts and was granted bail by a High Court in Accra.
The prosecution’s case at the time had claimed that BoG under the watch of Dr. Asiamah as the 2nd Deputy Governor, doled out over GH¢450 million to uniBank without following laid down procedures.
But he strongly denied these allegations against him and stood his ground that he followed laid down processes at the Bank of Ghana and acted based on technical recommendations from the Banking Supervision Department.
It was his case that there is no evidence that he stood to gain or gained anything personally from any such adverse consequences.
Dr. Asiama had also indicated that he took no unreasonable risk of the occurrence of any adverse consequences, and that no loss of the said GH₵150million occurred at all.
UT Bank
In the UT Bank case, Dr. Asiama was accused of allegedly causing financial loss to the state by approving GH¢413.09 million liquidity support for UT Bank without following laid down procedures.
He was charged alongside former Chief Executive Officer of insolvent bank, Prince Kofi Amoabeng and four (4) others for their alleged conducts leading to depositors of the bank losing money.
He pleaded not guilty to the charge and the court at the time granted him a self-recognizance bail of GH¢60 million.
Just as in the uniBank case, Dr.  Asiama denied any wrong doing in the UT Bank case and argued vehemently that he followed laid down procedures at the BoG, hence did not willfully cause financial loss of GH¢413.09 million to the Republic.
He said that money was granted by BoG to cover the working capital requirements of UT bank for 12 months while they pursued their Rights Issue which was underway.
He had consistently maintained that UT bank was also owing BoG on previous liquidity support extended as well as interest and that UT bank had also failed to honour a number of international payments that were threatening the relationship of other Ghanaian banks with correspondent banks abroad, so the GH¢413.09 million was to address these vulnerabilities.
It is also the position of Dr. Asiama that the Staff of the Banking Supervision Department of BoG scrutinized these and arrived at the amount of GH¢413.09 million to be extended to UT bank.
Dailyguidenetwork.com understands that the previous Attorney General was taking steps to drop the charges against Dr. Asiama before he left office.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak