Heritage Bank’s Collapse Was Political Vindictiveness …Amoabeng

Founder and CEO of the now defunct UT Bank, Prince Kofi Amoabeng, has said he

thinks the revocation of the license of the now collapsed Heritage Bank Limited (HBL)

by the Akufo-Addo government was an act of political vindictiveness.

Speaking on Accra based TV3, Mr. Amoabeng said he has struggled to see any

justification for the revocation of the license given that Heritage bank was being well run

and had no insolvency whatsoever.

Speaking to Paa Kwesi Asare in an interview on Business Focus, Mr. Amoabeng

responded to a direct question as to whether he believes the revocation of the licenses

of the banks was politically motivated as many believe.

“A few of them; specifically Heritage Bank,” Mr. Amoabeng said.

He continued, “I don’t understand the issue because the Chairman of the Board is Dr

Kwesi Botchwey. I have a lot of respect for him when it comes to finance in this country

and managing Boards and he will not, in my estimation, ever accept to be Chairman of

a bank that is not right and dealing in all sorts of things. I can say that for him”,

Together with Heritage Bank, Prince Kofi Amoabeng’s own UT Bank had had its license

revoked as well in a so-called financial sector cleaning by the Akufo-Addo government

that has since refused to make sense.

To carry out the clean up, the government spent Ghc21billion. And yet, the insolvencies

that it said had muddled the banking sector amounted to only Ghc11billion.

 

Many Ghanaians have since been wondering if Akufo-Addo thinks backwards. For

many more, it is not easy to see that the so called banking sector clean up was a

political vindictive ploy to collapse banks perceived to be owned by people allied to the

opposition NDC.

One of such banks was HBL whose license was revoked, not because it was insolvent

or was being poorly managed, but because according to Bank of Ghana Governor,

Ernest Addison, the source of Mr. Seidu Agongo, main shareholder in HBL, was

questionable.

According Addison, under whose incompetent nose the cedi is now steadily

depreciating towards the value of toilet paper, Mr. Agongo was facing criminal charges

over contracts that he had received from COCOBOD and so it was possible that he had

used the supposed corrupt money from COCOBOD to open the bank.

Of course, all of it was Addison’s own silly supposition. But acting on same supposition,

Addison had gone on to revoke the bank’s license even though Mr. Agongo was

defending himself before court.

And so, in the case of the HBL, Akufo-Addo had sued Seidu Agongo along former

COCOBOD CEO, Stephen Opuni, over supposed corrupt contracts and while Agongo

was defending himself, the government gave itself the benefit of the doubt and jumped

to conclusion that the money that was used to set up HBL was the proceed of corruption

from COCOBOD contract, and prejudicially revoked the license.

“I find it extremely odd that a bank – and it had not started doing business for it to have

bad loans and all those things – and for you to say that the owner didn’t have what it

takes [doesn’t meet the fit-and-proper criterion] or however they put it, I mean the owner

doesn’t run the bank, he’s a Ghanaian, he’s got the money, he’s appointed the right

people to run the bank for him, so, what is the excuse?”

“I find that extremely, extremely unfair”, Mr Amoabeng said, adding: “Maybe I don’t have

all the facts, but from where I stand, I find it really unfortunate”.

It would be recalled that On January 4, 2019, the Bank of Ghana had revoked Heritage

Bank’s license claiming Mr Agongo, the majority shareholder, among other things, used

proceeds realized from alleged fraudulent contracts he executed for the Ghana Cocoa

Board (COCOBOD), for which he has been facing prosecution together with former

COCOBOD CEO Stephen Opuni, for the past four years.-

“The issue of Heritage Bank, I wanted to get into the law with you, I don’t know if I

should, but we don’t need the court’s decision to take the decisions that we have taken.

We have to be sure of the sources of capital to license a bank; if we have any doubt, if

we feel that it’s suspicious, just on the basis of that, we find that that is not acceptable

as capital. We don’t need the court to decide for us whether anybody is ‘fit and proper’,

just being involved in a case that involves a criminal procedure makes you not fit and

proper,” Addison had told journalists.

 

But Mr. Agongo had called his statement“capricious, arrogant, malicious and in bad

faith”.

In purportedly making the determination, the central bank obviously had little regard for

the time-honoured principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a

court of competent jurisdiction”, adding that: “The fact that I have a case pending before

the High Court is a matter of public knowledge but my guilt or innocence is yet to be

determined by the Honourable Court”.

“The determination that I am not a fit and proper person to be a significant shareholder

of HBL because the central bank suspects the funds are derived from illicit or suspicious

contracts with Cocobod is not only calculated to pre-judge the outcome of the criminal

proceedings but also violative of the principle of presumption of innocence to which

every individual is entitled. Since when has suspicion become a substitute for credible

evidence?” Mr Agongo asked.