GHC 450 million NIB Assets in Nestle Disappears -In secret sale by Government

Latest information picked up by Whatsup News from insiders in the National Investment Bank (NIB) shows that NIB’s GHC 450 million investment in Nestle Ghana has been secretly sold to unknown buyers for GHC 500 million.

Nobody in the bank appears to know who the new investors are or what the basis was for the government-controlled bank was robbed of the badly needed assets that could stave off a potential hostile takeover.

Additionally, Whatsup News gathered that after the sale of this asset, and several other crippling measures imposed on NIB, the bank is relying on a monthly subvention of GHC 1 million to pay staff salaries, while the new Managing Director, Samuel Sarpong is being paid from an unknown source.

Insiders say the new MD of the state-owned NIB is not receiving his salary from the bank’s accounts as previous MDs did, rather his pay is coming from a mysterious source. Nobody appears to know the source or who is paying him.

Information shows that there is a relentless effort to by the government and Ken Ofori-Atta led Finance Ministry to kill the country’s foremost investment bank.

Whatsup News has tried unsuccessfully to get the Finance Ministry to answer a number of questions related to accusations that the woes of NIB is a a deliberate ploy to collapse it and sell it off to deep-pocket investors on Wall Street in the United States.

The Finance Ministry has refused to answer a list of questions forwarded officially, as speculations from insiders and civil society groups rages on.

An instance being cited by insiders as the ploy to cripple NIB is the Ken Ofori-Atta inspired attempt in 2017 to pay a whopping US$ 60 million (GHC 320 million) to a foreign company called Dominion Corporate Trustees which had dragged NIB to court after a promissory notes transaction with the bank went sour.

A high court had earlier ruled against NIB to pay a judgment debt and the government led by Mr. Ofori-Atta were readying themselves to settle the money but the board of NIB insisted on pursuing the case further in the Supreme Court.

In June 2017, the Supreme Court Unanimously ruled against Dominion Group, saving NIB over GHC 320 million.

Sources within the NIB board tells Whatsup News that two weeks before the case was expected to be heard in the Supreme Court, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta wrote to the board to withdraw the case and settle the US$ 60 million out of Court. The board is said to have refused and proceeded to win the case in court.

Recently, NIB was conscripted into a list of distressed banks to be taken over by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) called the Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT) conceived by the Finance Ministry.

GAT, according to the government, is a private initiative to rescue the supposed distressed banks. However, the Finance Ministry has kept the identities of the true owners of GAT under wraps as the government reportedly gave GAT a whopping GHC 800 million as a stimulus package to revitalise the banks under GAT.

The government had earlier wanted to use workers’ pension funds to finance GAT, but it backfired. Later, it initiated a bond for GAT, but that also failed, until it reportedly pumped in GHC 800 million into the controversial SPV.

Critics have questioned why NIB was listed on the GAT distress banks’ roll call because NIB was reportedly liquid enough to meet its financial obligations, including assets in hundreds of investments such as the GHC 450 million Nestle investment.

The government which owns over 95 per cent of NIB has seen state agencies frantically moving their funds out of the bank in a move suspected to be orchestrated by the government to cause panic withdrawals from the bank-a move that would further dent the reputation of the bank as a sustainable entity.

Several months ago, the Industrial and Commercial Union of workers at the bank (ICU) wrote a letter to the government to explain why it was running the bank down.

According to the ICU in their letter, its members working at the bank suspected something was not right and had written to the Board which comprise mostly representatives appointed by the government, “but the Board was economical with its response and implied that the Bank was relying on the Honourable Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and the Governor of the Bank of Ghana to determine the future of NIB,” the ICU explained.