‘Fake’ Financial Institutions licensed under your watch – Bawumia jabs John Mahama

Vice President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has accused former President John Dramani  Mahama of supervising the licensing of fake financial institutions when he was President leading to some eloping with hard earned-money of unsuspecting Ghanaians.

He made this claim during the launch of the United Nations Office for Project Services ( UNOPS) 5 billion dollar initiative to construct affordable homes in Ghana.

His assertion is in response to earlier claims by John Mahama that the current financial sector difficulties and the cleanup are a creation of the Akufo Addo-led administration.

“Under the NDC government of President Mahama, however, Ghanaians watched painfully as gains from these far-reaching reforms implemented under the Kufuor-led administration were eroded by years of no regulatory and supervisory oversight, leading to the licensing of institutions with fake capital, poor cooperate governance and impunity as shareholders plundered the deposits of poor depositors,” Dr Bawumia stressed.

He added that the approach adopted by the Bank of Ghana in cleaning up the financial sector was the best and suggestions that it could have been handled differently are without any basis.

The Vice President argues that “many of the financial institutions which had their licenses revoked could not even pay customers their deposits of as little as GH¢300” and that the actions of the Bank of Ghana are “to avert the collapse of the entire financial system.”

The financial sector clean-up which began in 2017 has seen the revocation of licenses of many banks, savings and loans companies, microfinance and microcredit institutions which were insolvent according to the Bank of Ghana.