Victims of the R5 and Pyram loans and savings scam say they are determined to go the bottom of the circumstances that led to the NDC government freezing the account into which billions of cedis belonging to them were kept.
The freezing of the account eventually led to hundreds of people losing their source of livelihood.
At a meeting yesterday at Baby's Inn at Mataheko, scores of victims pushed for the formation of an association to pursue the matter to its logical conclusion and to ensure that those involved in the scam are brought to book.
Top on the agenda was how they could retrieve the billions of cedis they lost when the companies folded up under bizarre circumstances.
The aggrieved victims agreed to regroup on November 24 to draft a resolution for submission to President John Agyekum Kufuor and to plead with him to use his good offices to commission an investigation into the circumstances that led to the operation of the phony companies, fish out those involved in the scam and institute measures to forestall future occurrences.
A spokesman of the group, Mr. Kwaku Barnes explained that since 1995 when the account was frozen they have not been updated on what has happened to the money. He said they are not sure whether the money was invested or not, adding that if the money was invested, then they would demand accumulated interest from the date the account was frozen to date.
The search for the lost money could be a wild goose chase because the main brains behind the rip-off cannot be traced. The only person who could probably be questioned on the issue is Dr. G.K. Agama, the former Governor of the Bank of Ghana during whose tenure the hoax took place.
Around 1993 the two non-bank financial institutions started operating a loans and savings scheme without licence from the Central Bank. Given the free terrain by the Central Bank's lack of supervision, the phony institutions succeeded in luring unsuspecting members of the public and top government officials to deposit billions of cedis with them in return for unsustainable interest rates. Following the Bank of Ghana's failure to check the companies, it was only a matter of time for the companies to go bust and the rest now belongs to history.
Now, in the era of a new government, the victims are demanding their pound of flesh.
