Allow BoG/SEC To Crack The Whip - Majority Leader To Ghanaians

Member of Parliament(MP) for Suame constituency and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei-Kyei Mensah-Bonsu has asked Ghanaians to exercise patience and allow Bank of Ghana to crack the whip on illegal and non performing financial institutions.

He says the Bank of Ghana as an institution may have delayed, but exercising its power now will safe guard the masses.

Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme, he explained that most financial institutions in the country are not qualified to accept deposits but the regulators have looked on all this while.

According to him this is the time as a country, we need to clean the financial sector and protect depositors interest.

"This country has too many banks which even developed countries don't have so lets allow the supervisory institutions to do their work so that the country does not experience any such scandal or scam again," he said.

Some aggrieved customers of Menzgold Ghana Limited on Tuesday 8th January defied Police orders to stage a demonstration in Kumasi, the Ashanti Regional capital.

The aggrieved customers who blocked access to Adum from Amakom, say their demonstration is to impress upon the company to pay them their locked funds

However, the Akufo-Addo led government has stated categorically that they are not going to refund monies owed customers of troubled gold dealership firm; Menzgold in as much as 'we sympathise with them'.

According to government, customers were warned as far back as 2016 not to invest with Menzgold but those warnings were disregarded.

“While government sympathizes customers on the difficulties encountered with their transaction with the company, the state cannot and will not resort to the use of taxpayer’s monies to refund customers monies . . . Menzgold was not licensed by BoG or SEC and its operations were not regulated by BoG or SEC."

"This warning was made as far back as April 2016, and, unfortunately, was disregarded by many customers of Menzgold. BoG and SEC are, therefore, not clothed with any legal mandate to refund monies clients,” a statement from the Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said.

The customers "whose contractual obligations have not been met by the company" according to government "are entitled to seek a legal remedy to retrieve their funds paid to the company" and assured that security agencies “shall employ all the powers of the state to find the accused persons, investigate the allegations and ensure that the law takes its course in this matter.”

A warrant for the arrest of embattled businessman Nana Appiah Mensah has been issued. He is wanted for defrauding by false pretence and money laundering.