'Vindictive' Akufo-Addo gov't deliberately killed 'solvent' Heritage Bank – Adongo

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga Central, Mr Isaac Adongo, has condemned President Nana Akufo-Addo and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) for stripping businessman and philanthropist Seidu Agongo of his Heritage Bank on frivolous grounds.

According to the Member of the Finance Committee of Parliament, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) erred in revoking the licence of Heritage Bank, saying that action against a solvent local bank which had good corporate governance structures, was needless and vindictive.

The opposition lawmaker told an audience during a presentation he delivered at the Takoradi Technical University on Thursday, 17 October 2019, on the theme: ‘Assessing the financial sector reforms; The impact on the ordinary Ghanaian’, that he does not understand why the government acted based on mere suspicion when the facts proved otherwise, especially when the law courts have not pronounced Mr Agongo guilty of any crime.

In his opinion, “They have aimed to make Alhaji Seidu Agongo, a philanthropist who recently dashed the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital a 33-bed building, into a man unfit to own a bank”.

The MP further disclosed that: “The Bank of Ghana, in mid-December 2018, pressured Heritage Bank to merge with Universal Merchant Bank (UMB) but after due diligence conducted by KPMG, Heritage Bank noticed that UMB was in a difficult position to become a merger partner. As a result, the board of Heritage Bank declined the offer by the Bank of Ghana. Days later, the Bank of Ghana revoked the licence of Heritage Bank Limited, the bank they were pressuring to merge and willing to supervise a merger between it and UMB”.

According to him, the recent financial sector clean-up through which Heritage Bank and eight other local banks were collapsed by the central bank, “aimed to destroy rather than rebuild. It was vindictive and targeted supposed adversaries of the NPP, Ken Ofori-Atta and persons not aligned to their family”.

The BoG revoked Heritage Bank’s licence on Friday, 4 January 2019 on the basis that the majority shareholder, Mr Agongo, among other things, used proceeds realised from alleged fraudulent contracts he executed for the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), for which he and former COCOBOD CEO, Dr Stephen Opuni are being tried, to set up the bank.

Announcing the withdrawal of the licence, the Governor of the central bank, Dr Ernest Addison told journalists – when asked if he did not deem the action as premature, since the COCOBOD case was still in court – that: “The issue of Heritage Bank, I wanted to get into the law with you, I don’t know if I should, but we don’t need the court’s decision to take the decisions that we have taken. We have to be sure of the sources of capital to license a bank; if we have any doubt, if we feel that it’s suspicious, just on the basis of that, we find that that is not acceptable as capital. We don’t need the court to decide for us whether anybody is ‘fit and proper’, just being involved in a case that involves a criminal procedure makes you not fit and proper”.

However, Mr Agongo responded with a press statement in which he said that the “not fit and proper” tag stamped on him by the central bank was “capricious, arrogant, malicious and in bad faith”.

According to Mr Agongo, “In purportedly making the determination, the central bank obviously had little regard for the time-honoured principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction”, adding that: “The fact that I have a case pending before the High Court is a matter of public knowledge but my guilt or innocence is yet to be determined by the Honourable Court”.

“The determination that I am not a fit and proper person to be a significant shareholder of HBL because the central bank suspects the funds are derived from illicit or suspicious contracts with Cocobod is not only calculated to pre-judge the outcome of the criminal proceedings but also violative of the principle of presumption of innocence to which every individual is entitled. Since when has suspicion become a substitute for credible evidence?” Mr Agongo asked.

Also, the erstwhile Prof Botchwey Board issued a statement on the matter in which it said: “Heritage Bank was by the Bank of Ghana’s own admission, a solvent bank. It NEVER received liquidity support from the Bank of Ghana. Its corporate governance record had never been impugned by the Bank of Ghana. We believe we have been done a grave injustice and a terrible precedent set that does not bode well for the future”.