Mr Dawda M. Hafisdeen, first defence witness for Michael Nyinaku, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the defunct Beige-Bank, says the Bank of Ghana (BoG) did not wait for responses to issues raised before revoking the licence of Beige-Bank.
He explained that after BoG had upgraded the Bank from Microfinance, Savings and Loans to Universal Bank on June 1, 2017, it reviewed some selected assets and made specific findings against it in 2018 and Beige-Bank was given ten days to respond, but BoG did not wait for the responses before declaring it insolvent.
Mr Hafisdeen, former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Bank was giving his evidence-in-chief at the High Court presided over by Justice Afia Serwaa Asare-Botwe, Justice of the Appeal Court with additional responsibility at the High Court.
The witness said same day, BoG appointed Nii Amanor Dodoo as the Bank’s receiver.
The findings were that the Bank’s stakeholders had injected an additional GHC102 million held as deposit for shares yet to be issued and that the Bank’s liabilities exceeded the value of its assets by GHC64.27 million.
Mr Hafisdeen said he and the receiver agreed that the accounting information was not updated and required reconciliation to be concluded and results posted in the Bank’s system.
The court was told that the receiver gave reports to both the Attorney General and BoG (inventory of the bank), saying that if BoG intended to use that report as the final financial report, it would be misleading because it was fraught with material omissions and misstatements.
“For the reason above stated, it was my expectation that the receiver will continuously engage with officials of the defunct bank for information that will enable him understand the nature of operations of the defunct bank as well as generate a set of final accounts for the defunct entity.
“As the days went on, I observed that this expectation I had was not reflecting in how the receiver was doing his work. Rather, the focus of the receiver’s work as we were informed by the officers from the receiver’s office, was to obtain the proof of the various account ledgers, that is to get the various transactions or entries that made up the balances in the ledger accounts.
“As CFO, I was aware of the existence of a lot of transactions whose postings into the trial balance were pending. Information on some of these adjusting items was known and the necessary vouchers had been prepared and were ready for postings. There were also other adjusting items in respect of which the information was known but the relevant vouchers were not yet prepared for the postings to be effected.”
The witness said there were yet another group of adjusting items in respect of which the information was to come later, and they drew the attention of the receiver’s team to the outstanding postings, but they were allegedly not interested.
“Throughout the period I stayed and worked with the receiver, I was not aware of any final accounts that were prepared by the receiver for the defunct bank. If any such final accounts were generated, it was not done with my participation.”
“As stated earlier, after the bank was placed in receivership, I worked with the receiver and CBG which absorbed the bank. During this period, I assisted the receiver and CBG with all the relevant information the receiver requested so far as the bank was concerned,” he added.
Nyinaku is being held for alleged theft and money laundering charges which he has denied.
He is being represented by Mr Thaddeus Sory.
GNA
KK
03 April 24
