Otabil should face the law if he’s guilty – IMANI Boss

In a facebook post by President of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe sighted by this portal, thepublisheronline.com, he stressed on the fact that if the former Board Chairman be found guilty or complicit in any of the agreements that crippled the bank, he should be made to face the law.

The IMANI boss was emphatic that relevant institutions have to conduct investigations into the matter and urged Pastor Mensah Otabil, to corporate throughout the process.

He accused the former CEO of the Bank of engaging in financial engineering beyond normal risks level and called for prosecution of other Board Members who knew about this but failed to prompt the Board Chairman of such abnormal deals.

Pastor Otabil has come under criticism from some Ghanaian social media users over his role in the collapse of Capital Bank owing to his position as the board chairman of the bank.

The central bank collapsed the bank in August 2017 over liquidity challenges. Pastor Otabil stands accused of supervising the mismanagement of GHC610 relief package to Capital Bank from the Bank of Ghana.

According to the BoG report, the bank’s board chairman by Pastor Otabil doled out ¢27.5m to a board member for “business promotion.

The board also approved an expenditure of ¢2.6M and $50,000 on “re-branding.” The board, the report said, also “ratified” a proposal to increase the fees and benefits of directors, including two first and business class air tickets for all members of the board

READ THE FULL STATEMENT BELOW: 

I am tempted to believe that Pastor Otabil was misled by his CEO. It does seem Pastor didn’t quite posess the financial ‘spirit’ and eye to detect that the financial engineering his CEO engaged in was beyond normal limits of risk. Is there evidence that other board members probably more experienced warned board chairman pastor about the varied seeds his CEO was sowing all over the lands that created a hole of Ghs 610m? As I have said, there is no evidence that board chair pastor actively colluded with his CEO to embezzle Ghs 610m so we cannot accuse him of wrong doing. However, as board chairman he must now take ultimate responsibility and ensure that we redeem the Ghs 610m by not only selling assets of his CEO and others, but also some of his own to make up. Then of course, he must cooperate with state investigative officers in the hope that evidence so gathered will lead to his CEO facing the full force of the law. Should Pastor be found culpable beyond ignorance of the deals, he should also face the law. Finally, he must pray for everyone to be guided by these very bad examples and never to repeat same.

It is in the same spirit that I extend a hand of coperation to the President of the land and his to his Finance Minister to simply cause a withdrawal of the KelniGVG grand scheme to deliberately upset the coffers of the state without returning any value. They should be guided by the observations of one, Kofi Nkulenu who recently wrote about the KelniGVG scheme “.. the company (KelniGVG) has not connected to monitor anything but here are the facts. The Ghana Revenue Authority says shortage on Communications Service Tax (CST) is less than ¢5million from January to June 2018 and it is normal because their targets are either ambitious or consumers are truly spending less today with increased data usage.

But as we have been told the shortage was only about ¢5million by the Revenue Authority, the Government has paid over ¢43m to look for ¢5million shortage of revenue. This ¢855million deal over 10yrs is one of the greatest procurement scams ever performed in this country’s history. The company Kelni is unknown with shady partnerships to another crooked entity called GVG (google them) and the Nation watches gleefully as we dissipate national funds to dark accounts without any work”. Mr. President, KelniGVG may be your nemesis. We won’t stop talking about it until it is withdrawn. When it is eventually done, we must prosecute all involved for wasting our time talking about it and for causing fiancial loss to the state. Have a great weekend everyone.