Story: Atta Kwaku Boadi 

Last week, a Special Committee set up by the Speaker Alban Bagbin sat to listen to submissions from government officials and customers of BlackShield Capital. The Special Committee was established by Parliament on 6th of December 2023, as a result of a petition dated 17th November 2023 and submitted to Parliament by Hon Mahama Ayariga on behalf of five (5) aggrieved members of Blackshield Capital Ltd.

Last week’s hearing proved that the revocation of the BlackShield Capital/Gold Coast Fund Management licence was based on political considerations and not objective technical grounds.  It was clear from responses given by the Director General and Deputy Director General of the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC); and the Registrar of the Office of the Registrar of Companies (ORC).  The Today Newspaper-has intercepted a letter from the Ministry of Finance which directed SEC to revoke the license of BlackShield on political grounds which we have produced in this edition for the information of our readers.

In what seemed to be a well -rehearsed chorus, the officials kept insisting that a key condition had been placed on distributing bailout funds to customers of fund management companies whose licenses had been withdrawn by SEC.  Yet, no one provided documentary evidence that Parliament in approving bailout funds had approved the alleged condition that a company had to be liquidated before bailout funds are given to its customers. Or that the Ministry of Finance when asking for the bailout funds had proposed any such condition.

It was clear that SEC, ORC and other officials were avoiding answering directly whether they had the money to pay BlackShield customers in case they were successful in getting a liquidation order.  The Head of the ORC referred the committee to the Ministry of Finance on that matter.  We provide evidence in this paper that even the bailout funds made available earlier in 2020 to fund management customers had small cash components with the rest being bonds to be redeemed in later years.  Incidentally, and rather suspiciously, BlackShield had offered a three year settlement solution similar to the one the Ministry of Finance and SEC has approved to be implemented.  

 Our information gathered from reliable sources point unequivocally to the fact that the ORC, SEC and the former Minister of Finance have been hiding the truth – that there is no money to use to make the bailout payments approved by Parliament. 

The former Minister of Finance, dismissed in the recent cabinet reshuffle, Ken Ofori-Atta, a founder of Databank (a competitor of BlackShield) is the one who allegedly designed the whole so-called reform programme.He appointed his former employee at Databank to become the Director General of SEC, Reverend Ogbarmy Tetteh.  This informs the speculation that not enough thinking went into the decision to force the withdrawal of the license of BlackShield and to seek its liquidation.  In fact, the question many have asked is, did Mr. Ofori-Atta use executive privilege to get rid of his Databank’s strongest competitor?

The Committee has as its Chairman, the Hon. Joe Ghartey, the MP for Essikado-Ketan. The Joe Ghartey led committee at its maiden sitting extracted questions from Bawku Central MP Mahama Ayariga who led the customers to petition parliament and Director-General for the Securities and Exchange Commission Rev. Daniel Ogbarmy Tetteh.

 Mr. Louis Yiadom is serving as the Clerk to the Committee. Dr. Theophilus Acheampong and Mr. Antonio Kesse are assisting the committee as experts.

The members of the Committee include the Hon. Edwin Nil Lantey Vanderpuye, Hon. Kwasi Ameyaw-Cheremeh, Hon. Gizella Tetteh-Agbotui, and Hon. Dr. Benjamin Yeboah Sekyere.  Officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Ministry of Finance, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and the Registrar of Companies, appeared before the Special Committee last week.

More to come.  On the BlackShield computer server the head of ORC claimed knowledge of its whereabouts; the link between non payment of government contractors and BlackShield (remember “SEC is not a debt collector”?); how “mark to market” comes into all this to make it a license revocation fiasco ; and why the committee must summon Ken Ofori-Atta to testify under oath.