The Accra Regional Police Command has granted bail to three customers of defunct fund management companies who were arrested on Tuesday, September 1, 2020.
The three were picked up for leading scores of aggrieved customers of defunct fund management companies to protest at the Ministry of Finance.
They protested over the exclusion of customers of Blackshield Capital Limited from the list of persons likely to receive government’s bailout package.
The protest follows a series of press conferences and agitations by aggrieved customers to demand from the government the payment of their locked-up funds.
Speaking to Citi News, the Secretary of the Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of the 53 defunct fund management companies, Joseph Aryeetey said they will continue to demand their locked-up funds.
“They arrested one old lady, they arrested our PRO and one other old man. I am just coming from the Accra Regional Police Command where we managed to secure bail for them and they have asked us to come back and report the next day. Our next step is that, so far as we believe BlackShield is ready to cooperate and engage with the government and customers to ensure that we are included in the bailout package, we will continue to engage with the SEC and the government.”, he said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had in a statement said that customers of Blackshield and three other firms will not be part of the bailout package because owners of such companies had challenged the revocation of their licenses in court.
The police officials explained that the leaders were arrested for staging an unlawful protest.
“On September 1, 2020, we heard a group of aggrieved people have besieged the premises of the Ministry of Finance and we saw that they had blocked the entrance of the Ministry preventing access and therefore it behoves on the police to come and ensure that they are dispersed and that is what we have done.”
“We keep on saying that if you want to embark on any form of protest or any form of demonstration, go through what the law requires for all of us under the Public Order Act 1994, Act 491 so if you do not go through this basic requirement then it means that the police will have no other option than to come and disperse the crowd and that is what the police have done,” the Public Relations Officer of the Accra Regional Police Command, Efia Tenge said.
Reconsider exclusion of BlackShield from bailout package – Aggrieved customers
The Coalition of Aggrieved Customers had earlier called on SEC to rethink the decision to exclude clients of BlackShield Capital Limited from the government’s bailout package.
Spokesperson for the Coalition, Charles Nyame described the exclusion of BlackShield’s clients as mischievous and a plot to divert the public’s attention from the poor handling of the financial sector clean-up.
“We consider the reasons given by the SEC as misleading and deceptive. The government also issued a bailout to other customers of companies that are also in court to contest their revocation. It is therefore questionable how the government and SEC decided to apply the rules differently. The actions by the government and SEC are mischievous and dishonest, especially when the government is aware that the court is on legal vacation. We hereby call on the government to rethink and include all BlackShield customers in the bailout package since advancing the bailout package does not amount to any interference in the court process,” he noted.
