Banking crisis: Auditors should be held liable – Adu Boahen

Business News of Friday, 2 November 2018

Source: Myjoyonline.com

2018-11-02

Charles Boahen3Deputy Minister of Finance, Charles Adu Boahene

The Deputy Minister of Finance, Charles Adu Boahene believes Auditors who oversaw the banks that went down should be held liable.

He was responding to a question from the audience on the role of auditors in the financial challenges we have seen especially in the collapsed banks.

Mr Adu Boahen was speaking at the JoyBusiness Financial Services Forum held at the Golden Tulip Hotel, Accra.

It was on the theme, “The Changing Tide of Ghana’s Financial Services Sector; “The Cause, The Cost and The Clean-up.”

The forum brought together a plethora of players in Ghana’s financial services industry; from the banking and non-bank financial institutions, the capital markets and the insurance sub-sector.

He said, “I believe that the auditors should be held accountable. One or two audit firms kept coming up with a lot of these banks and I can’t believe they passed these accounts. Anywhere else in the world they would be blacklisted and struck from the list.”

Bonds, Cash, Liquidity of Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG)

He also made some comments about an apparent disconnect between what the reality on the ground is and what is perceived as the monetary bailout of CBG.

He shed some light on the financial state of the newly created bank and sought to clarify what some perceive as a lack of funds in the bank. He asserted that liquidity had been provided.

“There was a cash element. It is bonds and cash. We capitalized a new bank. We wrote a cheque for GH?450 million. That was cash.”

“The bond that was issued can be monetised and I think either they have or are in the process of monetising the bond.”

He said, “So those institutions, CBG has decided that look either you take a haircut on the interest that you were expecting, your principal we’ll recognise and make you whole…”

You can’t expect us to pay you those fat interest that you were earning then, that would be unfair to the taxpayers that are shouldering this burden….”

He also warned investors to be wary when depositing or investing their funds particularly institutional investors.

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