Agency Report
According to Mr. Johnson Amoah, a financial analyst, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) had good reasons for withdrawing the licenses of Heritage Bank and other financial institutions during the central bank’s clean-up operation.
He clarified that the BoG provided sufficient justification for the actions against the bank.
“I’ve read rumors that the BoG was given the go-ahead to shut down Heritage Bank.
People are criticizing the Bank of Ghana’s decision, but in my opinion, there were sufficient grounds for the bank’s failure.
“The reasons were clearly given by the Bank of Ghana and I believe they make sense,” portions of his write up said.
The regulator came under section 16 (1) (a) (7) and (8) of Act 930, the Bank of Ghana may revoke a licence and appoint a receiver under section 123 of the Act where it is satisfied that an applicant provided false, misleading or inaccurate information in connection with the application for a licence or suppressed material information, and may in cases of emergency, or in the public interest revoke the licence of the bank without notice, to revoke the licence of Heritage Bank.
Further, sections 9 and 12 of Act 930 authorise the Bank of Ghana to revoke a licence if it considers that significant shareholders of a bank are not suitable.
The grounds for revocation of the licence are as follows: The bank’s capital appears to have come from sources which are suspicious. In the application for a banking licence, each shareholder of Heritage needed to demonstrate their “ability to subscribe to the shares” of the bank. The Bank of Ghana is not satisfied that the original sources of the bank’s capital are acceptable, in terms of section 9 (d) of the Banks and SDI Act, 2016 (Act 930) and section 1 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2008 (Act 749) which requires acceptable capital to be obtained from lawful and transparent sources. Specifically:
The promoters of Heritage provided evidence to Bank
