According to GAT, the allegations are unfounded and should be disregarded.

The Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga, has petitioned the Bank of Ghana Governor to investigate the Board Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT) over their alleged plan to offload the Trust’s shares to third parties.

Mr. Ayariga in his petition argued that Albert Essien and Eric Otoo were coordinating with the Ministry of Finance and the Second Deputy Governor of BoG to implement the transaction.

“The Finance Minister through its agents at GAT and SEC is in the process of offloading GAT shares to its third party nominees without giving an opportunity to original Ghanaian shareholders to buy same. This questionable conduct must be investigated by BoG and halted immediately or BoG will be seen as complicit if it is ultimately proven to be fraudulent and this will expose the bank to grave liability.”

The Bawku Central lawmaker also insisted that GAT, under the leadership of the two, had also engaged in various questionable transactions that had weakened the corporate governance capacity of some banks, thus rendering them vulnerable in the financial sector.

“GAT engaged the various banks at sometime in 2019 when the banks urgently needed capital injection to meet the new BoG recapitalization requirement.”

However, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Amalgamated Trust, Mr. Eric Otoo, responding to the claims on Joy FM on Thursday, December 23, 2021, said the allegations are untrue.

According to him, “GAT is not selling off shares at this point”.

“So to clarify the issue, I’ve seen a letter that’s been passing around on social media by the MP [Mahama Ayariga], as you indicated. And just to clarify, in the letter, the MP is indicating that GAT is selling shares of the banks that GAT invested in, as part of the government’s policy programme, and it’s actually not the case.”

“So to present the real facts of the matter, GAT is not selling off at this point, not selling off shares in these banks that GAT invested in”, he stated.