Dockets for financial crimes in Ghana are ready for prosecution to commence, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Godfred Dame has revealed.
According to him, this includes willfully causing financial loss to the State, stealing, corruption, fraud, procurement breaches and money laundering.
These cases, he said, involve sums of over $850 million.
Speaking on Ghana’s financial sector at Cambridge University, Mr Dame said the banking crisis necessitated some tough decisions by the government.
“Between August 2017 and January 2020, Ghana was hit by a severe banking crisis that affected several institutions, and several indigenous banks, as a result of which the central bank ordered a take-over of some of the banks by the Ghana Commercial Bank”.
The Central bank cited the insolvency of the banks as a significant reason for revoking their license.
“Internal auditors who were required to superintend proper accounting practices were complacent and covered up Executive Directors. The recent banking crisis held ramifications for the entire economy. It was the most severe economic crisis to affect Ghna since independence”, Mr. Dame said.
The Attorney General further explained that “five indigenous banks were consolidated to form the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited. A deeper examination of the banking crisis showed poor corporate governance, non-performing loans, breach of directors’ obligations, credit risks, and regulatory lapses were responsible for the vulnerabilities the banks were exposed to”.
“Prominent among such entities was an amorphous organisation operating a microfinance institution under the guise of – guess what – gold trading and illegally using the name of a bank. It called itself Menzbank. Apparently, Menzgold, as it was also called, had been dealing in the purchase and deposit of gold collectibles from the public and issuing contracts with guaranteed returns to clients without a licence from the relevant authorities”, he stressed.
“Against caution from the Central Bank, tens of thousands of individuals got hooked on the scheme devised by the company. Following the close down by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the customers could not retrieve their funds. The company relied on the greed and ignorance of thousands of otherwise hardworking Ghanaians who were prepared to pay their life savings to the suspects in the case, resulting in losses worth millions of dollars”, he noted.
He concluded that painstaking investigations have been conducted into these crimes to gather all the facts.
In the last six years, Ghana experienced alleged financial crimes including activities of the defunct gold dealership firm, MenzGold.
Source: Joy Business
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