Adongo Joins Capital Bank Boss, Ofori-Atta and Keli Gadzekpo Banter;

…claims he has evidence of the offer

Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo, has said there exists paper trail that proves that Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, and his long time business partner, Keli Gadzekpo, made moves to buy the defunct Capital Bank in 2016.

In a write-up directly responding to denials by Mr. Ofori-Atta and Keli Gadzekpo that they approached Capital Bank’s Founder, Ato Essien, with a buy-out proposition, Hon. Adongo said there is a letter that proves that the two did exactly what they denied.

“I have sighted a letter from Enterprise Group to Capital Bank signed by Keli Gadzekpo expressing interest to invest in Capital Bank,” Hon. Adongo wrote.

He went on to brand the Finance Minister and Mr. Gadzekpo, who is a Board Member of the Bank of Ghana, as liars over the denial.

“That both of you have the indecent courage to instruct your lawyers to churn out lies to deceive Ghanaians tells of such decay of your integrity deficit”.

Neither the Finance Minister nor Mr. Gadzekpo have responded to Adongo yet.

Yesterday, the two had raced to deny Mr. William Ato Essien’s revelation on Accra-based Metro TV’s ‘Good Evening Ghana’ show that Capital Bank, which has been forced to close down as part of the banking sector reforms superintended by Ofori-Atta had been attractive to the Finance Minister and the BoG Board Member just a little over two years ago.

Ken Ofori-Atta and Keli Gadzekpo, co-owners of Data Bank and Enterprise Group, he said had approached him and offered to buy off the bank but he had refused.

“If the bank was that bad would the current Finance Minister and the board chairman of Enterprise Keli Gadzekpo come to my office to say we are interested to buy Capital bank? Ken Ofori-Atta came to my office in 2016 to make that proposal,” Ato-Essien said in the interview.

The revelation reaffirmed popular speculation that Ken Ofori-Atta, after becoming Finance Minister in 2017, has been using his position to destroy competitors in the banking sector to make more room for his Data Bank.

A banking sector reform program that led to the collapse of some ten banks is also seen as a program that was used to collapse banks and financial institutions owned by political opponents.

It is against this backdrop that lawyers for the Finance Minister, Acquah Sampson and Associates, quickly released a statement denying that the Finance Minister and the BoG Board member had tried to acquire Capital Bank in 2016.

“We wish to place on record that neither Mr. Keli Gadzekpo nor Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta communicated to Mr. William Ato Essien an intention to acquire Capital Bank in 2016 as claimed by Mr. William Ato Essien. The claim by Mr. William Ato Essien against the two founders of Databank, a reputable Investment Bank, is plainly false, malicious and disingenuous,” the statement had said.

However, Hon. Isaac Adongo is calling the statement a lie, saying there exists a letter that proves that indeed Ken Ofori-Atta and Keli Gadzekpo, while out of Government in 2016, had made covetous advances at Capital Bank.

Hon. Adongo accused the two of dabbling in deliberate half-truths with their statement, pointing out that they had actually tacitly admitted making attempts to acquire the bank. That portion of the statement released by Ofori-Atta’s lawyers reads,”In any event, it may be worth stressing that an expression of interest, prior to examining the books of a Bank, cannot be stretched to mean or even imply an endorsement or confirmation that Capital Bank at that material time had a clean bill of health.”

Hon. Isaac Adongo, picking on that portion of the statement and wrote, “for the benefit of doubt, what you did was to confirm that you expressed an interest in acquiring the bank even though you did not get to the stage where you could carry out due diligence on the bank and confirm its financial health. Hence your rejection of Mr Essien’s argument that the bank was in good shape to have attracted your interest in buying it, cannot be tenable.

“Based on the facts, there is no denial that you actually approached Mr. Essien together with Mr. Keli Gadzekpo in Mr Essien’s office to acquire the bank”.