Fresh reports coming in indicates that the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice(AG) has dragged to court former Finance Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffour and former 2nd Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Mr Johnson Asiama.
In the suit filed at the Accra High Court today February 5, 2020, Dr. Duffour and eight others have been charged with “Conspiracy to commit crime namely fraudulent breach of trust”
Dr Asiama has reportedly been charged with wilfully causing financial loss to the state in the charge sheet to the High Court signed by the Director of Public Prosecution.
The latest lawsuit is an interesting twist to a convoluted litigation between the government and Dr Duffuor, who founded the collapsed UNIBANK. Dr. Duffour and Unibank are already in court challenging the government and the Bank of Ghana’s revocation of UniBank’s banking license on August 1, 2018.
The suit which was filed on August 20, 2018, is seeking several declarations, including an order of injunction restraining the Bank of Ghana from expropriating UniBank by its purported vesting of “good assets and liabilities” in Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited.
Other reliefs are that he wants a declaration that the license purportedly granted to the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited was not granted in accordance with Act 930 and therefore is “null and void.”
Meanwhile, a statement released recently by Dr. Asiama nailed Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta as the man who orchestrated the collapse of UniBank for which he and Dr. Duffour are facing a suit from the government’s Attorney.
According to Dr. Asiama, prior to the bank’s collapse, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) noticed that several government agencies were owing UniBank over GHC 1.3 billion, mostly through the Finance Ministry headed by Mr. Ofori-Atta, and that that debt could potentially cripple UniBank.
Dr. Asiama, in his statement revealed that the BoG actually invited Ken Ofori-Atta to discuss how the bank could be saved from the predicament brought upon it by government debts, but he refused to oblige the central bank.
“The Minister of Finance was actually invited to the Bank, based on my promptings to discuss these payments to UNIBANK, but he declined suggestions, on the grounds that UNIBANK had gotten enough support to thrive,” Dr. Asiama revealed in a statement issued over the weekend.
He added that: “Clearly, if at least part of these payments were done at the time, UNIBANK could have avoided the persistent daily clearing failures that eventually shut them out of the interbank money market.”
Incidentally, an 11-page leaked letter dated January 25, 2019, from Attorney-General Gloria Akufo exposed Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta as the man behind the collapse of UniBank, belonging to former Finance Minister Dr. Kwabena Duffour.
A copy of the leaked letter in the possession of Whatsup News shows that President Akufo Addo may have been “misled about the relevant facts informing the impugned decisions culminating in the revocation of the licence of UniBank…,”