Vice-president of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons has revealed that there is a conspiracy to loot the Development Bank Ghana (DBG).
According to Bright Simons, his revelation comes from a thorough analysis of evidence made available by a group of insiders and whistleblowers whose efforts to push for governance reforms internally have been rebuffed.
In his blog, Bright Simons wrote, “The insiders explain their motive for reaching out to civil society activists such as myself as one of pure desperation in a bid to stop a hugely vital national institution from becoming a basket case like all of Ghana’s previous development banks, from the likes of ADB and NIB, still on life-support, to the likes of BHC and GCOB, which have collapsed”.
He further wrote in his essay, “Some insiders say that things appear to have been arranged from the outset to make the Bank ripe for “looting”. They talk, for instance, about the Kulana deal, described in detail in my previous piece”.
According to him, Kulana was founded by the same entrepreneur whose other company was flagged by government auditors in 2018 for benefitting from large contracts with the Ministry of Finance without any tender in total breach of the public procurement laws of Ghana.
“Given that DBG was incubated at the Finance Ministry, it is not difficult to see how the same actors with whom the bosses at the Ministry had connived to circumvent procurement safeguards in other contexts would be brought along to persist the same patterns at DBG too”, he wrote.
In a statement on his social media page, Bright Simons noted that he has seen the Development Bank Ghana is responding to the issues however they are not addressing the very specific charges laid.
The Vice-president of IMANI Africa detailed that DBG should publish all the audit, compliance, and assurance reports so that the media and the public can make up their own mind.
The Development Bank Ghana was set up to address the appallingly low private sector credit levels in Ghana.
