Members of BA Regional House of Chiefs and the general public watching video on DKM
It has now been established that the Sunyani-based microfinance company, DKM has no investment in the country and beyond after it collected huge amounts of money from numerous customers.
This is according to the audit report of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) released to the Brong Ahafo Regional Security Council (REGSEC).
Martin Delle, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of DKM and his directors, contrary to Bank of Ghana (BoG) regulation, set up subsidiary companies and lent people’s money to themselves.
This came to light on Thursday when the Brong Ahafo Regional Security Council, which was under pressure from customers across the region, showed the video of REGSEC’s meetings it recently held with DKM officials, BoG representatives, REGSEC members and leaders of aggrieved customers on the matter for people in the region to ascertain the truth for themselves. The video captured 12 different meetings.
The four-hour video was watched by members of the regional house of chiefs, security chiefs, university and polytechnic professors, businessmen, workers and the general public.
A lot of people became dumbfounded and had more questions unanswered.
Head of Microfinance and Other Banks at BoG, Mr Amanful, who set the records straight in the video, told REGSEC that after BoG granted DKM operational license on October 10, 2013, it later detected that DKM had gone contrary to instructions given to them.
. They gave five percent of their operational working capital to individual customers. They were also asked not to give loans to related organisations because they are not banks.
BoG also learnt that interest rates of 50 percent to 70 percent being offered to customers were not feasible so we had to come in and close them down after several warnings.
Explaining further, Mr. Amanful said GH¢10.7 million was retrieved from the main DKM head office and its other seven branches across the region.
After auditing, BoG realized that GH¢10.7 million in the account was 10 percent of the monies collected from customers.
About GH¢100 million was missing so we had to ask DKM to inject GH¢50 million into their operational funds to protect the interests of customers. This is what to date the company is struggling with. As part of the condition, they were also to employ the services of a chartered accountant and chartered banker and show documentary evidence to BoG so that can be allowed to begin operations. They were also asked to reduce the interest rates being quoted to customers. DKM went back and established two more companies in the name of poverty alleviation and financial giant and distributed the interest rates among them, ranging between 17 percent and above and started giving credit again and came back to inform BoG that it had reduced the rate. BoG’s investigations later revealed that the companies, which bear the name of DKM, actually belonged to them. They were subsequently closed down. As at the time they were closed down, only GH¢17 million was found in the account of poverty alleviation, he indicated.
Eric Opoku, who is head of REGSEC, therefore pleaded with the people to offer suggestions on how to solve the problem.
He blamed the minority caucus in Parliament from the region of not seeking the facts from him before organizing the press conference to politicize the issue.
