President of UT Holdings says he gave Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo loan and saved Ofori-Atta’s company from collapse

Speaking to TV3, Mr Amoabeng also disclosed that UT gave Nana Akufo-Addo a loan while he was in opposition ostensibly to fund his political campaign.

“In actual fact, our president; today’s president, when he was in opposition in his own party in around 2003, he came to UT of all places, a local company, and we gave him a loan and he admits that.”

“The Minister of Finance, same thing; his own company would have gone down…and I said this’s Ghanaian company and they still got the potential and we help them out,” Mr Amoabeng added.

In August 2017, the Bank of Ghana revoked the licences of UT and Capital banks due to their insolvency. This led to a seamless takeover of the two banks by GCB Bank.

This also led to the suspension of UT Bank from the Ghana Stock Exchange. Provisional figures showed the total liability of UT Bank stood at GH¢850 million while its total assets was pegged at GH¢112 million.

After the licence was revoked, government agencies started investigating Mr Amoabeng for what the central bank has termed as ‘willful deceit’.

In the interview, Mr Ofori Atta said he “used to be very, very close to him [Ken Ofori-Atta]” but said, “I’m sure now I’m not his friend anymore.”

He recalled how Mr Ofori-Atta called him on phone the day before his bank’s licence was revoked but the Finance Minister never mentioned anything about it.

According to him, they had a “normal chat” which bothered on family, noting he woke up the next morning, August 4, 2017, to find several missed calls on his phone.

“I woke up in the morning and…I had 66 missed calls and I said the world is coming to an end,” he said in the interview, noting he immediately called his daughter who broke the news of the collapse of UT Bank to him.

Talking about the financial institution he created which existed for over 20 years before its eventual collapse, Mr Amoabeng said UT created the now waste management giant, Zoomlion, which started off by selling exercise books, saying “we gave him (owner) funding to buy a printing machine.”