Banking probe: Adongo’s boycott “needless”, “useless” - MP

The Member of Parliament for Bantama in the Ashanti Region has taken a swipe at his colleague legislator for boycotting the ongoing probe into the banking crisis.

Daniel Okyem Aboagye said the arguments on which the Minority MP left the meeting abruptly, are misplaced.

He cited the failure of the rest of the Minority MPs to join Mr Adongo in his exercise as just how wrong the latter was; describing his actions as "needless" and "useless".

Ranking Member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, Isaac Adongo stormed out of the in-camera probe on the first day of the hearing [Wednesday] ranting about some documents he said the Governor of the Bank of Ghana failed to provide.

Read: 'It's a cover-up!' - NDC MP storms out of bank crisis probe

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.

But speaking on the AM Show on the Joy News TV Thursday, Mr Aboagye tore apart Adongo’s reasons for walking out of the meeting.

He stated that some of the documents Mr Adongo was demanding for, had already been made available to the committee at a meeting Adongo absented himself from.

Related: Public probe into banking crisis can collapse economy - MP

“We met twice before the probe began; a month ago we met and he was there but two weeks ago we met again and he wasn’t there. One of the documents he was asking for was provided at the meeting. The detailed report from KPMG on UniBank was provided two weeks ago,” he said.

He added that even if Mr Adongo was dissatisfied with the executive summary of the boulder's report -- which provided enough information -- the governor himself was present to answer any questions he [Adongo] had.

Mr Aboagye also noted that all attempts to convince the NDC man yielded no results hence his storming out.

MP for Bia East, Richard Acheampong who was also on the show and was among the NDC MPs who sat back to continue the probe noted that Mr Adongo reserved the right to walkout but they [rest of the minority] saw no reason to leave since they had enough information to continue the probe.

Richard Acheampong

He however said that he wasn’t impressed with the answers from the governor.

He noted for instance that the BoG officials found complicit in the crisis according to the governor, were just transferred to other departments while others were being investigated by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO).

Related: GCB takeover as BoG withdraws licenses of UT, Capital Bank

              BoG creates Consolidated Bank to take over 5 struggling banks

Meanwhile, the three day Parliamentary probe into the crisis that saw seven banks collapse in a 12 month period continues.

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