Banking rot probe: CBG, KPMG, PwC next for Parliament

Officials of Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG), KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers are scheduled to appear before Parliament’s Finance Committee on Thursday as a probe into the collapse of seven banks enters day two.

Issues relating to job losses, the legality of the establishment of the Consolidated Bank and how government investments in the bank can be recouped are expected to dominate discussions when officials of CBG appear.

The committee is also expected to scrutinise the quality of work the auditing firms – KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers – did based on which the seven collapsed banks were taken over by the Bank of Ghana.

Wednesday’s hearing revealed that no Bank of Ghana official has been punished despite the regulator’s admission that it was partly to blame for the collapse of some indigenous banks.

The Governor of the central bank who appeared before a Parliamentary probe into banking crisis failed to show it had sanctioned its officers, a member of the probe John Jinapor said.

He said Ernest Addison beyond admitting the central bank was complicit in the failed banks saga, could not give firm responses on what is being done to punish officials of the central bank who supervised the collapse.

Between August 2017 and August 2018, seven banks – uniBank, The Beige bank, UT, Capital, Sovereign, , Royal and Construction  banks – have had their licenses withdrawn by the regulator.

Related: Nobody at BoG has been punished- Parliamentary probe reveals

Drama at Wednesday’s hearing

MP for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo, on Wednesday, walked out of an in-camera probe into the bank crisis, accusing the committee of a cover-up.

“Why will I sit in that meeting? I will not sit in that meeting”, he said after rejecting documents he was given at the hearing.



He said the documents are insufficient in unravelling the circumstances leading to the collapse of the seven banks in 12 months.

The NDC MP was given BoG press releases on the defunct banks, state of banking system report for March 2018, the central bank Governor’s speech and the Executive summary of a Boulder’s report into uniBank.

But a disappointed Isaac Adongo said the documents are a pale shadow of the information required to get a better understanding of the circumstances leading to the collapse of the seven banks.

He said auditing firm KPMG has done five asset quality reviews on uniBank alone, the reports of which have not been presented to the Finance committee.

While the Executive Summary is 86 pages, the entire report is over 250 pages.

 

 

Source:Myjoyonline