Defunct Capital Bank CEO, William Ato Essien, has indicated that he was extremely shocked when his bank was taken over by GCB.

According to him, Capital Bank had an investor from India who had given the bank a certificate of an undertaken which would have given the bank enough money to recapitalize.

He said the bank shared this development with the Bank of Ghana, as such, “what happened on August 14, 2017 was a shocker”.

Speaking to Paul Adom-Otchere on Good Evening Ghana, he said prior to the collapse of his bank, an AQR report had indicated that his bank was insolvent, something that happens in the banking sector, so he was not surprised but he never dreamt of the bank collapsing.

Mr Essien indicated that the Boulders Advisors report on his bank was an unfortunate documentation any consultant would put together.

“How can a consultant put a documentation of that nature together and use words like piggy bank. It’s as if the gentleman had something against me and I wonder, the day I meet him I’ll ask him that ‘Sir, where do you know me from, did I do anything to offend you?’…” he quizzed.

Mr Essien believes the auditor erred by not speaking to him while carrying out the audit of the bank because he has more knowledge of the institution than anyone else.

He explained that “in finance, a debit can become a credit and a credit can become a debit based on the narration and nobody had an institutional memory more than William Ato Essien because I founded it... So if they go to talk to people who had worked with the institution only for a year or a year and half, what institutional memory do they have to help you situate figures?”

He noted that he got to know about the whole report in the media when inappropriate figures were ‘flying’ around.