Banking Crisis: Don’t spare BoG officials – Joe Jackson

The officials of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) whose actions and inaction led to the banking crisis should not be let off the hook, financial analyst Joe Jackson has said.

He explained that the BoG officers were negligent and slept on the job, a situation, he believes, resulted in the crisis, which, in turn, caused job losses.

The government has already spent over GHS13 billion paying depositors of the collapsed banks, revealed Vice-President Dr Mahamadu Bawumia recently.

Speaking at a Townhall Meeting and Results Fair in Kumasi a few weeks ago, Dr Bawumia said the payment will be extended to victims of the DKM scandal, too.

“Employees whose salaries and employee benefits had been unpaid by the defunct institutions have been paid or are being paid by the receivers. The government has already spent over GHS13 billion paying depositors of banks and other financial institutions, and the President has given the assurance, and I will like to repeat that no depositor of a bank, savings and loans or microfinance company would lose even a pesewa of their deposits.

“All depositors of these institutions will receive a 100% refund of their deposits since this was no fault of their own. The government has asked the receiver (working with the Bank of Ghana) to expedite the validation and payment of depositors so that all depositors will receive their monies after validation.”

Meanwhile, the State has levelled criminal charges against some of the directors and owners of the banks that went under during the recapitalisation supervised by the Dr Ernest Addison-led central bank in Ghana.

Mr Prince Kof Amoabeng and Dr Kwabena Duffuor, owners of the defunct UT Bank and uniBank, respectively, are answering questions in court for their alleged involvement in the crisis.

William Ato Esien, Michael Nyinaku, owners of Capital Band and The Beige Bank, respectively, have also been charged.

Similarly, a former Second Deputy Governor of the BoG, Dr Johnson Asiama has been charged.

Speaking on the Dwabirem show hosted by Kwame Appiah Kubi on CTV, Wednesday, 26 February 2020, Mr Jackson said: “All the BoG officials who supervised the rot should be questioned because they sat unconcerned up until 2016 when a new government took over to act”.

He said: “The problem started small but because the BoG were negligent, it became a huge issue and that has brought us where we are today – where billions of cedis are being spent to clean up the sector”.

“We need to ask all the PhD holders at the BoG who sat down for the financial wound to grow to harm us.”