Thievery caused banking crisis – Casely-Hayford

The purported rot in the build-up to the collapses of Capital Bank and UT Bank is the result of thievery, Financial Analyst Sydney Casely-Hayford has stated.

For him, the fate of the banks was simply the culmination of the ill-intent of persons within the banks and the regulator, the Bank of Ghana.

“Things that happened in UT Bank and Capital Bank did not happen because there were bad structures or weak governance. It happened because there were thieves in those banks,” Mr. Caseley-Hayford said on The Big Issue.

He also stressed the compromised position of the Central Bank saying, “the governance system has its own problems because there were thieves there as well.”

He felt the alleged malfeasance “must have been with complicity from the people who are supervising and regulating it.”

“When you have elements of thievery within a system, whichever way you do it, people will find mechanisms to steal. If they don’t do it by yourself, they will do it by colluding by other persons in order to ensure that they get what they want… You had a group of crooks in the system whose intention was to make this thing work.”

“Until we start looking for those crooks and sorting things out, we will never win.”

Though no clear illegalities have been established, the Finance Committee of Parliament is preparing to tackle the crisis in the country’s banking sector in a move that may feature public hearings to probe officials of collapsed banks.

Seven banks have collapsed in the past 12 months; uniBank, Capital Bank, Sovereign Bank, Construction Bank, UT Bank, Royal Bank and The Beige Bank.

In the past few days, an investigative report revealed the boards of the Capital and UT Bank were aware of some failings.

The reports outlined bad governance practices, incompetence and mismanagement by top management and board members for the collapse of at least two of the banks, UT and Capital Banks.

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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citinewsroom.com/Ghana