By Isaac Ato MENSAH
Accra – 25 January, 2019
Let’s make this simple – POTROG is head of state and head of government of the Republic of Ghana.
Shall we add ‘…as by law established’?
On Monday 16 July, 2018, the Bank of Ghana (BOG) announced the cancellation of the purchase of ADB Bank by some fraudsters wearing corporate masks.
They are all those professionals hiding behind Belstar Capital Ltd., Starmount Development Co., EDC Investments Ltd., and SIC Financial Services Ltd.
In the Ghana Football Association (GFA) scandal, Amanda Clinton, lawyer for the GFA rightfully argued that GFA should not be dissolved.
Her argument was that in almost all such fraudulent situations, what the courts have done traditionally was to ‘lift the veil of incorporation’, punish the individuals involved and let the organisation which is a corporate person continue to exist.
Solid logic a la the Nuremberg Trials.
So when such a crime – stealing a state asset via purchasing ADB Bank in a clandestine manner has been uncovered and cancelled by BOG, the matter should be of national and international interest.
Why?
First, SIC Insurance, one of the culprits, is a state-owned insurance company.
Second, EDC Investments Limited is owned by Ecobank.
And who are the owners of Ecobank?
So you see the international dimension of this fraud?
Ordinarily, the proper thing this blog should do is to ask the regulators to punish the institutions involved and also the individual schedule officers of course and ensure their robust prosecution.
BUT, we have crossed six months since the fraud was determined and pronounced upon by BOG.
The culprits have not challenged the BOG decision and the nation has not heard anything since July last year.
In fact in a nation where microphone happy spokespersons suddenly refuse to answer questions from journalists and where freedom of information is a luxury, POTROG himself becomes the number one public relations officer of this nation.
After all don’t all our leaders jump into presidential jets, globe trotting and branding Ghana to investors under the mantra of ‘rule of law….the legal system works…..your investments are safe’?
CGTN Africa on 18 July, 2018 narrated the story this way:
“Belstar and Starmount have participated in a series of other questionable, unsafe, and unsound related-party transactions involving UniBank Ghana Ltd. to the detriment of Ghana’s financial system and for their financial gain and benefit,” the regulator said. Belstar and Starmount “aren’t fit and proper” and cannot be allowed to hold shares either directly or indirectly in ADB, it said.
Calls to the office of the acting managing director of SIC Financial Services, Eno Ofori-Atta, weren’t answered. Simon Dornoo, the administrator of UniBank, wasn’t available for queries when contacted at his office. Kisseih Antonio, the managing director of asset management at Ecobank Capital, didn’t immediately comment when contacted by phone. Calls to the offices of Belstar and Starmount in the capital, Accra, didn’t connect.”
If these institutions are ‘not fit and proper persons’ to hold and manage investors’ monies according to the BOG’s own press statement available on its website, then what shall we say of the individual “damaging directors” – as Ghanaian businessman Kofi Wayo, calls them, together with their RENTED BEAN COUNTERS – who worked on this criminal secretive theft of a state asset as corporate communications executives, marketing gurus, legal advisors, transaction advisors and ball boys begging for Keta School Boys?
Did these culprit organisations not incur any expenses in this bogus transaction?
So why are their shareholders quiet?
Or are they not aware of what the BOG discovered and acted upon.
Sometimes when I sit under my neem tree and recall the drum appellations from school children at the Independence Square, Accra, calling on POTROG to speak to the nation, I wonder what will happen if he REALLY spoke like he is supposed to speak.
We need answers and quickly too.
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