The offices of the State Insurance Company (SIC), especially in Accra, have been reduced to a shell of its former self because there is virtually nothing to do these days, WhatsUp News has learnt.
According to available information the redundancy is due to the fact that Enterprise Insurance, a company owned by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has basically done a hostage takeover of all the business portfolios of the State Insurance Company.
There have been claims that even movable assets of SIC, including cars, have been turned over to Enterprise Insurance.
Consequently, SIC staff have nowadays been mostly holidaying on the job – they come to hang around the office and just wait for the month to end to receive their salaries, insiders tell Whatsup News.
Enterprise is the second of two companies owned by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, that have received contracts from the Akufo-Addo government in a classic conflict of interest perpetration. The other is the Databank Group.
Since Akufo-Addo became President, his cousin, Ken Ofori-Atta, whom he has made Finance Minister, has had his companies underwrite every major bond or loan that the government issues or contracts. Early in 2017, Ken Ofori-Atta made his first dubious incursion by selling US$2.25billion worth of bonds to Franklin Templeton, a company in which the Chairman of Enterprise Insurance, Trevor Trefgarne, was also a director.
Public spirited Ghanaians took the matter up but Ken Ofori-Atta was left off the hook. In the most recent case, the same Ofori-Atta’s Databank has been named as financial advisors to the Agyapa Mineral Royalties deal, which has plunged the scandal-prone Akufo-Addo government in its umpteenth scandal.
Enterprise Insurance and Data Bank have become the two companies that do under-writing for almost all of government financial contracts.