Ahantaman Shareholders Go Wild

A group calling itself Concerned Shareholders of Ahantaman Rural Bank at Agona-Nkwanta in the Ahanta West District of the Western Region has warned to resist any attempts by the Board Members of the bank to adopt any illegal method to elect additional board members at the bank’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) slated for Saturday December 15, 2012.

According to the group, information reaching it indicated that the Board Members intended to adopt some means to prevent shareholders who had not bought a certain number of shares to be elected as members of the Board.

It explained that per the norms of the rural bank, any shareholder who could read and write and was interested to be a board member could become one if the person got the nod from the majority of the shareholders.

“We the concerned shareholders are not defiant to the Board Members but we will resist any attempt by members of the board to allow a few shareholders to elect board members other than all the shareholders,” members of the group maintained.

It would be recalled that the aggrieved shareholders of the bank in October this year petitioned the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to expeditiously investigate circumstances under which the rural bank lost an amount of three billion cedis in a loan agreement.

The shareholders did not understand why the board members of the rural bank approved loans to two companies despite the fact that a huge amount of GH¢400,000 given out as loans was not retrieved.

They petitioned the BoG to unravel how the rural bank lost the money and the bank’s decision to flout the BoG regulations not to engage in foreign transactions.

Under the transaction, according to the shareholders, over 3,000 flat screen television sets were allegedly brought into the country by the rural bank from China for sale to the shareholders.

According to the group, the television sets were not bought because most of the shareholders were rural farmers and petty traders.

They stressed that no attempt should be made to create the impression by the Board to the outside world that the shareholders were defiant.

In related development, a team from the Bank of Ghana will meet with the leadership of the concerned shareholders of the rural bank a day before the AGM to discuss the findings of its investigations into the allegations levelled against the bank by the group.

Confirming the story in an interview, Mr. Samuel Kanga, one of the leaders of the group, noted that the meeting, according to the BoG, had become necessary in order to ensure transparency and protect the image of the bank.