MASLOC Is in the News Again

The last time that the Microfinance and Small Loans Center (MASLOC) was in the news, it was about a flagrant act of defamation in which the former Mahama Chief of Staff second-bananas, Dr. Valerie Sawyer, accused the newly named Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the pro-poor social intervention banking establishment of having misappropriated some funds earmarked for the uplift of the underprivileged and destitute albeit hardworking Ghanaian entrepreneur. Back then, the Akufo-Addo-appointed MASLOC CEO threatened Dr. Sawyer with a defamation lawsuit. I wrote and published an article staunchly backing such legal action. And then everything seemed to have quietened down or died a natural death.

Well, now MASLOC is in the news again. This time, though, it entails an ironic twist, which is that a former Mahama-appointed MASLOC Chief (Did I hear somebody say “MASLOC Thief?), Ms. Sedina Tamakloe Attionu, stands accused of having illegally invested MASLOC funds in another microfinance establishment called Obaatanpa Microfinance Limited, at the considerable interest rate of 26 percent for a 91-day period. We are further informed that Ms. Attionu requested the withdrawal of the investment from the Obaatanpa Microfinance Company, a request which was promptly complied with. However, we are further informed that a forensic auditing of the accounts of MASLOC revealed that the aforesaid investment capital and other funding resources, estimated at more than GHȻ 3 Million, never made it back into the MASLOC coffers from where they had been taken.

Actually, it was an amount of GHȻ 500,000 that was invested in the Obaatanpa Microfinance Company Limited. The rest of the more than GHȻ 2 Million entails the general misappropriation of MASLOC funds, either in the form of contractual inflation or plain embezzlement (See “Mahama Girl in Trouble Over GHȻ 3.1 Million MASLOC Cash” DailyGuideAfrica.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/21/18). In one instance, some 1,000 tricycles valued at GHȻ 5 Million was recorded in the MASLOC ledgers as having been purchased at some GHȻ 10 Million, if memory serves yours truly accurately. The good news here is that this MASLOC malfeasance has reportedly been submitted to the Office of the Independent Special Public Prosecutor for any action deemed necessary to be promptly and accordingly taken.

It is also heartening to learn that at least the official accounts of some six state-owned agencies have also been submitted by, I presume, the Auditor-General’s Department to the Office of the Special Prosecutor. The affected agencies are the Ghana National Gas Company (GNGC), the Ghana Free-Zones Board (GFZB), the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST), Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and the Ghana Technology University College (GTUC). What is important here is that whatever sums of money, interests and punitive damages may be owed the State and the Ghanaian taxpayer would be promptly returned and put to the most legitimate and appropriate use for the remarkable improvement of the living standards of the Ghanaian people, my profuse apologies to President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

It needs to be emphasized, once again, that we are here not the least bit interested in or inordinately fixated on the metaphorical exaction of our proverbial pound-of-flesh, in Shakespearean parlance, although we also see the necessity of having some of the soon-to-be indicted and convicted criminal suspects and veritable criminals do some considerable time behind bars – in much the same manner that goat, chicken and yam thieves are routinely punished by our judicial system – if only to strictly serve as an instructive and constructive deterrent to the rest of our politicians and public officials. It is long overdue for the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to send the unmistakable message and serious signal to the nation at large that the rankly corrupt days of business-as-usual, doggedly and nose-thumbingly promoted by the outgone Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) are well behind us. A new day of impartial and unprejudicial political and public accountability has dawned.

Indeed, it was quite elating and instructive, several months ago, to hear the then newly appointed Special Prosecutor, Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, categorically and publicly state that he was more about the godly and patriotic business of effecting justice devoid of vindictiveness. This may clearly be the reason why the Special Prosecutor has, so far, avoided unsavory pressure from special interest groups among the ranks of some civil society organizations to swiftly and rigorously prosecute cases that are likely to immediately give the public impression of witch-hunting on his part, in particular the widely publicized case involving the allegedly criminal transfer of some GHȻ 40 Million liquid cash from the coffers of the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST) into the private bank account of one of the key operatives of the Mahama Presidency sometime between 2014 and 2016.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 22, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]