Tsikata's single 280,000billion cedis debt pile-up

It is emerging that Tsatsu Tsikata offered to throw in another rig belonging to the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) to another international bank, apart from Societe Generale, for debts he had piled up in some of his bizarre schemes that has laddered the state with over 500 billion cedis debts.

A significant percentage of his debts had sovereign guarantees. He offered the rig, Asterix, a semi-submersible drillship to Societe Generale as collateral/security, including the more popular drillship Discover 511, and to the London office of the giant Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, a financial institution he was dealing with.

According to the Chronicle, it gathered that Tsatsu had mortgaged one part of the rig to the French bank (Societe Generale) because he had committed part of the equity on that particular rig somewhere else.

Because of the insufficiency of liquidity on that, he was required by the Trade and Commodity Department of SG to find more cash to retire his indebtedness or add more assets.

After negotiations with SG, he gave up the rig Asterix as additional security/collateral to the bank.