EOCO asked to help recover GH¢116m untraceable investments
The Receiver for defunct Special Deposit-taking Institutions (SDI) is requesting the assistance of the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) to recover GH¢116.7 million investments from non-operational investment institutions.
This was after unsuccessful attempts to trace the whereabouts of the institutions that were identified to have received funds from 17 defunct SDI.
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) made this known in its recent update on the receivership status of the defunct SDI.
Indications are that defunct Accent Financial services was so far the biggest culprit as close to GH¢39 million was placed with Capital & More Microfinance and Nordea Capital.
Meanwhile, Express Savings and Loans Limited was identified as the defunct SDI with least fund of GH¢533,132.37 placed with Senaf Investments.
Other untraceable investment institutions include, Capital Africa Group, Samba Transfer Services, Beige Group Limited, Griffin Financial Services, Konodum Africa Mining Limited, Ekumfi Quarries Ltd and Equity Capital.
The rest are Nordea Foundation, Susu Plus Services, Equity Capital Limited, EL FX and Geojita.
In August 2019, the BoG announced the revocation of licences of some 23 insolvent savings and loans companies and finance house companies whose levels of capital were in violation of the minimum regulatory capital required by Act 930.
The situation, according to the Bank, made it precarious for the institutions to continue to undertake the business of SDI, given the risks they posed to their depositors and other counterparties to whom they were exposed directly or indirectly.
Faulting SDIs were found to have engaged in excessive risk-taking without the required risk management function to manage risk exposures and the use of depositors’ funds to finance personal or related-party projects or businesses on non-commercial terms thereby compounding their liquidity challenges.
BoG sighted override of internal controls, poor accountability, creative accounting practices, under-provisioning for impaired assets and corporate governance weaknesses with weak Board oversight, as enablers of the violations.
Source: GNA