BoG Working with Local Banks to Bring Us Down – Menzgold

Lawyer for Menzgold, Kwame Akuffo, has accused the Bank of Ghana (BoG) of dissuading local banks from transacting business with the gold trading institution.

According to him, this is a deliberate attempt of the BoG to destroy their business.

Speaking in an interview on Starr FM, he stated, “I know for a fact that the Central Bank is telling banks not to do business with us, that wouldn’t be proper for an economy which thrives on free market, can that be proper? The Central Bank wants to find a way to cripple us, which is untenable.”

“Because I’m a lawyer I don’t like to speak to suspicions but there is reasonable grounds from other informed members of society that Menzgold is attracting lots of gold deposits and that they are taking away money from the banks,” Mr Akuffo said.

There have been speculations in the media that the Central Bank may be after them for disrupting deposits at the local banks.

But Mr. Akuffo stated that the company has decided to suspend dividend payment to their customers out of respect to the Securities and Exchange Commission and not because they are bounded by law.

Menzgold in a statement Thursday said: “Following the notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Ghana issued on the 7th day of September, 2018, the Management of Menzgold Ghana limited in its bid to bring some finality to the issues once and for all has decided to place a temporal halt on all extra value payments and any new business related to our Gold Vault Market.

“The halt takes effect from Thursday 13th September and will be in place for 6 days, by which time we believe all pending issues related to the Gold Vault Market Product would have been ironed out.

We are certain this halt would not go beyond the 19th day of September, 2018.

“This decision, though very unfavourable to us has been informed by our commitment to the rule of law, absolute respect to state agents, agencies and total submission to the state”.