As part of efforts to build a strong and robust financial sector, the Bank of Ghana and the Economic and Organised Crime Office, EOCO have signed an agreement strengthen the investigative operations of the EOCO.
To this end, the Board of the Central Bank has approved a grant of ten million Ghana cedis which will be disbursed in two phases.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison the move will help the Economic and Organised Crime Organisation (EOCO) to carry out its mandate properly.
“By this Memorandum of Understanding, the bank of Ghana will provide the needed resources to strengthen the operations of the EOCO, to execute its mandate. The bank’s board approved a grant of 10 million cedis to be disbursed in two phases to support the work of EOCO. The support from EOCO in the receivership process has been enormous. Some of the successes chalked include the receiver transferred 100 properties to EOCO to be investigated to ascertain ownership. This comprised 68 landed properties connected to microfinance institutions and 39 connected to nine savings and loan companies, “ he said.
He also highlighted the need for the Attorney General quicken steps and begin prosecutions of officials who were accused of corruption-related offences during the banking and financial sector crisis.
This comes after the Economic and Organised Crime Office, EOCO submitted work on investigations done about some criminal actions that led to the collapse of some financial institutions in the country.
“EOCO has investigated and forwarded eleven dockets to the Attorney General’s Office which has been done more than a year ago. And I’m saying so just to put pressure on the attorney general’s departments that the dockets have been referred to them more than a year ago, pursuant to Section 19 of the EOCO Organized Crime act 2010 act 804. Notwithstanding all these achievements, there is a lot of work still waiting to be done with respect to tracing of assets to build concrete investigations to lead to the effective prosecution of the perpetrators of these financial crises,’ he added.
Financial sector clean up
In 2017, the Akufo-Addo-led government implemented the financial sector clean-up initiative to prevent the financial sector from collapsing.
This followed an asset quality review in 2015 and 2016 by the Bank of Ghana. The report noted that there were severe challenges with solvency, liquidity and asset quality in the country’s banking industry.
The financial sector clean-up started by the government in August 2017 led to the collapse of nine universal banks, 347 microfinance companies, 39 microcredit companies or moneylenders, 15 savings and loans companies, eight finance house companies, and two non-bank financial institutions.
Source: Citinewsroom