General News of Friday, 21 December 2018

Source: mynewsgh.com

Court throws out Dr. Duffour's suit against BoG’s takeover of Unibank

Kwabena Duffour, former Minister of Finance Kwabena Duffour, former Minister of Finance

An Accra High Court has dismissed an application brought before it by Dr Kwabena Duffour, who is a former Minister of Finance and also a former Governor of the Bank of Ghana provoking the powers of the High Court in Accra to order the Bank of Ghana to give him back his bank Unibank, MyNewsGh.com can report.

In the suit filed on Monday August 20, 2018, Dr Duffour was asking for an order of injunction restraining the Bank of Ghana from expropriating uniBank by its purported vesting of “good assets and liabilities” in Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited. But the Accra High court found the suit without merit, striking it out.

The details of the ruling will be available soon.

Other reliefs he sought included a declaration that the license purportedly granted to the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited was not granted in accordance with Act 930 and therefore is “null and void” and a declaration that the “good assets and liabilities of uniBank, including deposits of depositors, cannot be lawfully vested in Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited.

He filed the suit together with Integrated Properties Limited of Top Base in Gbawe, Accra, as plaintiffs, the Accra High Court also refuse to uphold Dr Duffuor’s plea for an order of injunction restraining the Bank of Ghana from “arbitrary and capriciously impairing almost the entire loan book, including debts of Government and quasi-Government institutions and shareholders’s advances in the accounts of uniBank to justify its purported revocation of the license of uniBank.”

UniBank’s operating licence was revoked on August 1, 2018, along with four other banks, as reported by MyNewsGh.com. They were merged into the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited. The regulator Bank of Ghana explained that the consolidation of uniBank, Sovereign Bank, Royal Bank, The Beige Bank and Construction Bank became inevitable following liquidity challenges and breach of regulations by some of the banks.