Dawda M. Hafisadeen, a witness in the trial of Michael Nyinaku, has blamed the Bank of Ghana (BoG) of rushing to declare Beige Bank insolvent.

The witness said in the morning of August 1, 2018, BoG issued queries to Beige to be responded to within 10 days but announced revocation of the universal bank’s license in the afternoon of the same day.

BoG further appointed Nii Amanor Dodoo as Receiver of the bank despite the management of Beige and the central bank having had a meeting that very morning.

Dawda said the news of the revocation of the bank’s license was received just after they, himself and Nyinaku, had returned from meeting the BoG officials.

He told the Accra High Court, presided over by Justice Afia Serwaa Asare-Botwe yesterday that the meeting with the central bank was borne out of two issues that were established from assessment of the Beige operations.

The first issue had to do with injection of an additional amount of GH¢102 million into the bank by shareholders, which was held as deposit for shares yet to be issued and the bank’s liabilities exceeding the value of its assets in the region of GH¢64.27 million.

According to him, there had been discussions between himself, as a former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Beige and Nyinaku, the CEO, on responding to the queries.

Hafisadeen told Mrs. Asare-Botwe, a Court of Appeal judge, that even though he devoted three months to working with the Receiver as well as Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG), he was not given the privilege to sight the final report of the Beige.

As he testifies in the courtroom, the witness couldn’t confirmed whether the reports presented to the Attorney-General’s office and BoG were the true state of account of Beige.

The witness didn’t shy away from pointing out that the conclusions drawn by the Receiver in the report submitted to the BoG were premature and may not have a binding effect.

He said this in reference to several sections of the report that the Receiver made remarks such as “adjusting entries may have to be passed”, “validation work ie on-going,” and “farther adjustments may have to be passed after ongoing validation entries are completed”.

As a profeseonal accountant, he noted that “all these remarks give an indication that Exhibit 1 is more of an interim report whose details are subject to change after the results exercises that were ongoing at the time Exhibit 1 was authored.”Furthermore, he argued that the updated version of Exhibit 1, which the Prosecution claims has been sent to the BoG was not tendered in as part of the exhibits in the court.

Michael Nyinaku is facing 43 charges of stealing, fraudulent breach of trust and money laundering and has been granted bail.