GN Savings’ case suffers more adjournments

Chairman of Groupe Nduom, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, says he is looking forward to securing victory in the lawsuit against the Bank of Ghana for the restoration of the license of GN Savings and Loans Company.

He says his interest is to pay customers of the company of Goldcoast Fund Management now Blackshield Fund Management whose funds are locked up due the revocation of the license of GB Savings.

According to him, he took the legal action since he is convinced that the Central Bank’s action was in bad faith.

Shareholders of GN Savings and Loans Company in September 2019 dragged the Bank of Ghana, Finance Ministry, the Receiver and the Attorney-General to court to challenge the revocation of its license.

The Bank of Ghana has been unsuccessful in challenging the High Court’s jurisdiction to hear the case.

As the High Court is expected to proceed with the case, Dr. Nduom says he is optimistic of regaining his company’s license.

“The adjournments haven’t come at our instance. It has come because the lawyers for the Bank of Ghana have sought not to have this case be heard by the High Court. So, even though the High Court has ruled against them in a number of instances, they have continued to try to prevent the High Court from sitting on this case. It happened again this past week on Thursday. The lawyer for the Bank of Ghana said he had a case, so this case had to be adjourned to July 9, 2020. Still they are going on to the Court of Appeal and other places to try to prevent the judge from hearing the case. How long must we wait for justice to be rendered?’ he asked

He further noted that, “as for the substantive matter, I will stay away from it, but my concern is not Papa Kwesi Nduom. My concern is that, we have customers with GN Savings and Loans, Gold Coast Fund Management whose monies are sitting somewhere and have suffered throughout this whole process with us. We want this matter settled so that those people can be taken care of.”

Background

On August 16, 2019, the Bank of Ghana, BoG, revoked the specialised deposit-taking licences of over 20 savings and loans companies. This included GN Savings and Loans Company Limited. The reason which the BoG gave for the revocation was that GN Savings was insolvent.

However, on August 30, 2019, the shareholders of GN Savings filed a case at the High Court to challenge the BoG’s decision. The defendants in the case are the BoG, the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori Atta, the Attorney-General, Gloria Akuffo and the Receiver of GN Savings and Loans, Eric Nana Nipah.

In his statement of claim, he said contrary to claims by the Bank of Ghana that GN Savings and Loans had its license revoked because the company was insolvent, the company, was in good standing and its government infrastructure project portfolio was in excess of GH¢2.2 billion, more than its liabilities.

He said most of the company’s funds had been invested in government projects as loans and advances to contractors who government through its ministries and agencies had hired to execute various projects.

Thus, his company would have been highly liquid if the Ministry of Finance and other government agencies had paid debts of over GHS 600 million owed to it.

He therefore asked the court to rule that the failure of the BoG to consider that indebtedness of the Government of Ghana and its MDAs to Group Nduom before declaring GN Savings and Loans to be insolvent, constitutes a violation of his rights, that of Group Nduom and Coconut Grove Resort.