Banking crisis: Collapse of UT Bank 'rattled' me – Kofi Amoabeng
Two years after his company was collapsed by the Central Bank, President of UT Group of companies, Prince Kofi Amoabeng, has disclosed that he occasionally feels the aftershocks that came with the dissolve.
Read full articleSpeaking on the ‘KSM Show’, Prince Kofi Amoabeng said he always feel that he has miss a heartbeat, so he had to see his doctors for a checkup.
He said his doctors told him that he is fit and there is nothing wrong with him, so he requested to see a clinical psychologist and after a chat, the psychologist told him he was alright.
“Yes there was a bit of a shock but I knew the bank was virtually gone. As they were reporting capital depreciation, I knew all my wealthy was going away,” sober Kofi Amoabeng recounted.
He added that he always feel the pain anytime he thinks of what he has created, the staff and the investors who trusted UT and himself to invest a lot in his company.
“Sometimes what I worry about is of 15,000 shareholders who invested in UT and none of them has contemplated going to court. It shows how Ghanaians take anything thrown at us,” he noted.
He indicated that the shares had some value, therefore, the action of the BoG on behalf of the government should not have affected the shares. Therefore he called of the testing of the law.
“It pains me that because they trusted me, they’ve lost their lifetime investments. For the staff of UT Bank, some of them worked their hearts out. It wasn’t really for myself because to me it is only a jab at my reputation but not the end of my life,” he stated.
When asked if he feels he had let people down, Mr Amoabeng indicated he hasn’t for “at no point did I give less than the best that I could.”
“The problem with this country is that the institutions and the structures and the policies that are supposed to protect our rights have all been weakened and I blame the regulator for being part of it,” he said.
He explained that initially when the BoG saw that UT Bank had a liquidity issue, they could have taken all kinds of measures like appointing an adviser or bail the company out to curtail the problem.
