As part of efforts to build a strong and robust financial sector, the Bank of Ghana and the Economic and Organised Crime Office, EOCO have signed an agreement strengthen the investigative operations of the EOCO.
To this end, the Board
of the Central Bank has approved a grant of ten million Ghana cedis which will
be disbursed in two phases.
Speaking at the signing
ceremony, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison the move will help
the Economic and Organised Crime Organisation (EOCO) to carry out its mandate
properly.
“By this Memorandum of
Understanding, the bank of Ghana will provide the needed resources to
strengthen the operations of the EOCO, to execute its mandate. The bank’s board
approved a grant of 10 million cedis to be disbursed in two phases to support
the work of EOCO. The support from EOCO in the receivership process has been
enormous. Some of the successes chalked include the receiver transferred 100
properties to EOCO to be investigated to ascertain ownership. This comprised 68
landed properties connected to microfinance institutions and 39 connected to
nine savings and loan companies, “ he said.
He also highlighted the
need for the Attorney General quicken steps and begin prosecutions of officials
who were accused of corruption-related offences during the banking and
financial sector crisis.
This comes after the
Economic and Organised Crime Office, EOCO submitted work on investigations done
about some criminal actions that led to the collapse of some financial
institutions in the country.
“EOCO has investigated
and forwarded eleven dockets to the Attorney General’s Office which has been
done more than a year ago. And I’m saying so just to put pressure on the
attorney general’s departments that the dockets have been referred to them more
than a year ago, pursuant to Section 19 of the EOCO Organized Crime act 2010
act 804. Notwithstanding all these achievements, there is a lot of work still
waiting to be done with respect to tracing of assets to build concrete
investigations to lead to the effective prosecution of the perpetrators of
these financial crises,’ he added.
Financial sector clean up
In 2017, the
Akufo-Addo-led government implemented the financial sector clean-up initiative
to prevent the financial sector from collapsing.
This followed an asset
quality review in 2015 and 2016 by the Bank of Ghana. The report noted that
there were severe challenges with solvency, liquidity and asset quality in the
country’s banking industry.
The financial sector
clean-up started by the government in August 2017 led to the collapse of nine
universal banks, 347 microfinance companies, 39 microcredit companies or
moneylenders, 15 savings and loans companies, eight finance house companies,
and two non-bank financial institutions.
Source: citibusinessnews