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Mensa Otabil admits to rough week after bank collapse

By CitiFMonline
General News Mensa Otabil admits to rough week after bank collapse
AUG 20, 2017 LISTEN

International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) Pastor, Mensa Otabil has noted he had quite the turbulent week, after the collapse of Capital Bank, of which he served as Board Chairman.

During his sermon on peace today [Sunday] he recounted that “Monday was a fortunately good day for me. I was fine on Monday. Tuesday was a very bad day for me. Wednesday was a very terrible day. You go through this stuff and you wonder; wow, what a week!”

But this experience only served to provide Pastor Otabil with another testimony of God’s goodness to him as he said, “on Thursday morning, I started feeling God's favour.”

The pastor normally starts the preparation of his Sunday sermons on Tuesdays, however, “this Tuesday, I was not in a frame of mind for a sermon. This was not sermon Tuesday.”

“Wednesday definitely wasn't a sermon Wednesday” either for Pastor Otabil, who faced some criticism for the running of the Capital Bank as revelations of negligence at its top level seeped into the public domain.

“But on Thursday, I got up, I picked my laptop, I opened it and Thursday, I put my ideas down like I normally do and all of a sudden, I just felt like a cloud just left my shoulders.”

The collapse of Capital Bank and UT Bank marked a seismic shift in Ghana’s banking sector. The two banks were heavily deficient in capital and liquidity.

It, therefore, became necessary for the Bank of Ghana to revoke their licenses and approve a Purchase and Assumption transaction to allow GCB Bank to take over all deposits and selected assets of UT Bank and Capital Bank.

A leaked 2014 memo published in the Insight Newspaper in 2015 revealed that Capital Bank, then First Capital Plus Bank, was on the verge of collapse.

The bank's Chief Executive Officer at the time even described the situation as a “time bomb” as he warned that Capital Bank had capitalization issues and may not be able to meet its obligations to its clients.

The memo addressed to the Board of the Bank, also outlined cases of mismanagement that had compromised their shareholder's credibility and he urged that it take drastic and urgent steps to resolve the bank’s situation.


By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

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