Alfred Tuah Yeboah
The office of the Attorney General has served notice to all persons involved in the collapsed of financial institutions in Ghana.
According to the state prosecutor, all persons whose action and inaction led to the collapsed of the nine banks during the financial sector reforms undertaken by the central bank will face full rigors of the law.
Deputy Attorney General, Alfred Tuah Yeboah, served this notice on Tuesday November 8 after the appearance of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the defunct Beige Bank Michael Nyinaku in court.
Mr Nyinaku was granted a bail of GH¢200 million by the Financial and Economic Court 2 of the Accra High Court after he pleaded not guilty to all counts.
According to his counsel, the developments spanned from about 2015 to date and the accused has religiously appeared before various Investigative bodies including Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO).
He noted that they have never defaulted as and when they were needed and hence prayed the court to grant him bail.
Speaking with journalists after the hearing, the Deputy Attorney pointed out that “In cases like this you need to have time to do a thorough investigations. We are talking about figures, it is not something that you can conjure, you need experts to go through the books, so we decided to let some space so that at least, we can do everything so that when it comes to court we don’t have problems at how we arrived at figure A or figure B. It is about a thorough investigation.”
He said the state has lost substantial amount of the money in the banking sector clean up and it needs to prosecute persons involved for recovery.
“The depositors needed to be paid, the government had to pay, we are now in court to prosecute and if possible recover. If you paid an amount of GHC1.2bn from the tax payers money we need that money back, we can get it back only when you take a legal action like we have done today.
“I can assure you that there are other cases that will also, very soon, come to court. We have done a lot of investigations to recover those moneys.
“Banks, Micro Finance, Savings and Loans, Let me sound this warning to those who were involved in Savings and Loans, Micro Finance and other banking institutions, if you were involved and the state has to cough money to pay, you will be called upon to answer the charges. We are very much ready,” he explained.
By Vincent Kubi