Ato Essien is the founder of defunct Capital Bank The founder of defunct Capital Bank has disclosed that the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, had made attempts to buy the bank in 2016.
William Ato Essien argues that if his bank was not being well managed, it would not have attracted interest from Ken Ofori Atta then.
“If our bank was that bad, our current Finance Minister together with the CEO of Enterprise Group, Kelly Gadzekpo,” won’t have come to his office to say they “were interested in buying the bank,” he told Paul Adom Otchere in a teaser for his Good Evening Ghana show.
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) revoked the license of two commercial banks – UT Bank and Capital Bank in August 2017.
The action was triggered by the inability of the two banks to turn around their negative capital adequacy position which has lingered on for some time now.
BoG said the action had been taken against the affected banks due to their “terrible” financial situation and their inability to perform within the banking industry. Mr Ato Essien is said to have engaged in acts of “willful deceit” which contributed to the collapse of his bank and one of the closed banks, Sovereign Bank.
But he has denied that accusation.
He said there is no point robbing a bank he founded quizzing “looking at migrating it from an unregulated institution to a regulated space and now to a universal bank, what was the point?”
Mr Ato Essien has sued for the collapse of the bank denying misgovernance claims made by the plaintiff, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
This was after he was sued along with 15 other shareholders and directors.
He has argued, a financial autopsy report which formed the basis of the suit against him was “arbitrary, unfair, prejudicial and against the rules of natural justice and offending due process.”Popular pastor, Mensa Otabil and his church, International Central Gospel Church, are among 15 shareholders and directors of defunct Capital Bank sued over the collapse of the bank in 2017.The writ of summons named the ‘sins’ of each of the defendants and confirmed a financial autopsy report that said the failed bank’s founder, William Ato Essien, used depositors funds as his “personal piggy bank”.Pastor Otabil came out to explain in August 2018, that during his non-executive role as a Board Chairman of the bank, some decisions that were made turned out well while some did not turn out […]