“People who look like an insult to themselves are also insulting me” – Otabil

Founder of International Central Gospel Church, Pastor Mensa Otabil has said news of Capital Bank’s collapse offered some persons an opportunity to ridicule and insult him.

Delivering a sermon on peace today [Sunday], Pastor Otabil who is Board Chairman of the Bank laughed the development off, saying : “The reality is what is happening now and I experienced quite a bit of that this week. Reality is when you hear stuff you don’t want to hear. When people are insulting you – people who have no right to insult you are insulting you. People who look like an insult to themselves are insulting you… but that’s reality. ”

While admitting to a turbulent week after the collapse, he also indicated that the development had taught him the hard lesson that there are persons who only rejoice over the misfortunes of others.

“There are people when you are down they feel up because they have been down for so long…There are people who will kick you when you are down and sometimes people you have helped will kick you when you down, people you have encouraged will kick you when you are down and that’s the reality,” he said.

Otabil who is CEO and consultant of Otabil and Associates had 3% stake in the bank while ICGC which he founded also had 3% shares.

The Central Bank, a few days ago, authorized GCB to take over Capital and UT Banks.

The collapsed banks were “unable to develop an acceptable plan”, according to the BoG, which indicated in a statement that it made efforts to help UT Bank and Capital Bank recover via private alternatives.

The Central Bank said there were “repeated agreements between the Bank of Ghana and UT Bank and Capital Bank to implement an action plan to address these significant shortfalls.”

However, the owners and managers of UT Bank and Capital Bank were unable to increase the capital of the banks to address the insolvency.

The BoG in its statement said the GCB Bank took over UT Bank and Capital Bank “as part of efforts to extend their reach and grow their balance sheet to position them to support large transactions in a fast growing economy.”

GCB will take over all the depositors’ funds and will continue to provide normal banking services to customers and depositors of the two collapsed banks will now become customers of GCB Bank.