Bulldog, as the artiste manager is known in the showbiz circles, making a submission on UTV’s United Showbiz on Saturday, January 9, 2021, without any equivocation emitted that suggestions that customers invested at their own peril hence, cannot hold the government responsible for the inconvenience caused them is unacceptable.
“We’ll get our monies back else Nana Addo will run; he won’t finish his 4 years. I’m telling you. He won’t finish his 4 years,” a visibly angry Bulldog vehemently barked.
He established that his concerns are not influenced by the fact that he was once an employee of Zylofon Media, one of the companies owned by Menzgold boss Nana Appiah Mensah (NAM1), but was as a result of the fact that he is a victim.
Menzgold was shut down on Thursday, September 12, 2019, and stopped from taking on new investments after an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) found that the company did not have the licence to deal in gold-trading. Unable to refund the over 1,000 customers the investment estimated to be about GH¢200 million, Chief Executive Officer of the now-defunct company Nana Appiah Mensah, was dragged to court.
While the final determination of the case is yet to be made, there have been numerous calls on the government to give customers a bailout but the Akufo-Addo-led government has said it will not use taxpayers’ money to pay Menzgold depositors.
Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in a media engagement said unlike the situation where the government rescued 4.4 million depositors whose funds got locked up in some banks and specialised deposit-taking institutions who were collapsed by their regulatory authorities over infractions and insolvency, the customers of Menzgold are not entitled to such rescue since they defied all warnings from the Bank of Ghana to do business with an unlicensed financial institution.
“Menzgold is not a licensed financial institution. We are talking about licensed financial institutions but if you set up your 419 institution and the Bank of Ghana warned repeatedly that people should not do business with Menzgold because they were not a licensed financial institution, so, you can’t use taxpayers’ money to pay locked-up funds of an institution that is not a licensed financial institution," Dr Bawumia said on Techiman-based Link89.1 FM in October last year.
Watch Bulldog's submission below.
Lawrence Nana Asiamah Hanson (Bulldog)