Banking crisis: 50 directors, shareholders of collapsed banks to face court

Fifty directors and shareholders of the seven collapsed banks are expected to face trial over their alleged culpability in the banking crisis.

This follows the referral of their dockets to the Attorney General’s office after the conclusion of the work of a special team set up to investigate financial crimes in the country.

According to the Daily Graphic, a special investigative team is awaiting the appropriate charges to be preferred against these directors based on the outcome of their investigations.

The collapsed banks are uniBank, UT Bank, Capital Bank, Royal Bank, Construction Bank, the Beige Bank and Heritage Bank.

The central bank noted that affected banks operated with severe capital constraints as it revoked their licences.

The crisis saw the deposits of some 1.5 million Ghanaians affected though the government stepped in to safeguard their monies.

Protecting the depositors has so far cost the state GHc 9.9 billion, according to the Finance Minister.

Receivers chasing defaulters

The receivers of the banks are also pursuing 31,000 customers of the failed banks to recover more that GHc10, billion in loans and advances.

The receivers of the collapsed/consolidated banks have been able to recover only GHS731 million in loan repayments,

According to the paper, uniBank, one of five banks merged into the Consolidated Bank Ghana limited, has the highest number of defaulting customers at 26, 558 with a total debt of GHc4.6 billion.

Receivers of uniBank have already tried to recoup a GHc5.7 billion debt from the collapsed bank’s shareholders with a plan to assume control of some of their multi-million dollar assets which were acquired under questionable circumstances.

The receiver dragged the 17 shareholders of the bank to court to force them to repay the GHC 5.7 billion debt allegedly owed.

Some of the properties run into millions of dollars with the most expensive of the property costing $250 million.

The Bank of Ghana has already made it known that shareholders of uniBank used monies from the bank to acquire estate properties in their own names.

In addition, Sovereign Bank had 298 customers owing some GHc136 million.

For Royal Bank, 752 customers are said to have defaulted to the tune of GHc1.42 billion whilst Beige Bank has 3,371 customers needing to refund GHc872.

There are reports that for one of the failed banks, more than GHc 3.8 billion did not pass through the loan books.

This was only identified after a special audit because the monies were reportedly distributed among the bank’s directors.