Story: Atta Kwaku Boadi

The stage is set for the final ruling on the long running lawsuit filed at the Human Rights Division of the High Court against the Bank of Ghana (BOG), the Attorney General and the GN Savings Receiver.  

Originally, the Minister of Finance Ken Ofori-Atta was a respondent in the matter but was removed during the course of hearing the matter.  

An Accra High Court presided over by Appeals Court Judge Gifty Agyei -Addo issued a hearing notice for Court to give judgement on October 26, 2023.  However, the court proper did not sit on that day.  The judge joined the lawyers on all sides on Monday 30th October 2023  to review the case files.  A date was set for Wednesday 1st November  2023 to possibly set a date for the ruling but the Attorney General was not represented in court.  

The judge continued the case by setting the date of 14th November 2023  for all parties to appear in court.  This time, she told all parties that once everyone has been served notice, she would give a date for her ruling on that date.

The expectation on all sides of the matter is that the key decision expected from the Appeals Court Judge Gifty Agyei – Addo on Tuesday November 14th  2023 is the date she will rule on the Nduom and others versus BoG lawsuit. Essentially, none of the lawyers in the matter including Frank Davies representing the BOG, Philip Addison representing the Receiver, the Attorney General Godfred Dame or Justice Srem-Sai representing Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom have no say in the decision to give a date for the judge’s ruling.  

It may be recalled that Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom and two other shareholders of GN Savings & Loans have been in court since August 2019 to challenge the Bank of Ghana’s decision to revoke the Savings & Loans’ licence . .Their case is that the Bank of Ghana and the Minister of Finance have colluded to “maliciously” understate the assets of GN Savings & Loans.  

 Dr. Nduom has also said out of court that it was the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison who convinced him at a meeting in 2019 to ask for the reclassification from universal bank to savings and loans.  

According to him, the request was granted but the savings and loans licence  was abruptly revoked.  

He said, Dr. Addison promised an upgrade to universal bank status when government agencies made  payments on the significant amount of receivables due to Groupe Nduom companies.

According to an affidavit deposed to by Dr Nduom sighted by Today, the Bank of Ghana had reached an “unfounded, unproven, unverified and bizarre conclusion in respect of GN Savings’ financial position” because of their “failure or malicious refusal to take into account GN Savings’ assets that were and are still with the Government and its MDAs.”

It is also to be noted that a case still resides with the Supreme Court over the management of the assets of GN Savings. Perhaps the Supreme Court may decide to give its ruling on this matter given the deterioration in the value of assets taken over by the Receiver appointed by the BoG.