The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected the Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of Menzgold Ghana’s (CACM) request to be included in government’s bailout package established to pay locked up funds of depositors of collapsed financial companies.
In the reply dated September 9, 2020, the Commission emphatically mentions that members of the Coalition cannot be included in the bailout fund because “the target of the bailout is clearly defined and does not cover Menzgold customers”.
“The SEC is implementing the bailout provided for in the Mid-Year Review of the Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government of Ghana and Supplementary Estimate for the 2020 Financial Year. Section 239 of the Budget Statement approved by the Parliament was very specific” it reads.
The letter, which was assented to by the Director-General of the SEC, Reverend Daniel Ogbarmey Tetteh and addressed to the Chairman of the Coalition, Mr Isaac Nyarko further explains that Menzgold was not an asset management company under SEC’s modulation.
CACM called on government to include them in the bailout fund when the SEC announced a week back that clients of collapsed fund management companies will start receiving their locked up funds before the end of the year.
According to the industry regulator, the decision to pay these persons followed a relief granted by the Official Liquidator, the Registrar General, to liquidate 22 fund management companies (FMC’s) whose licenses were revoked by the SEC in November 2019.
But the CACM says its members have been subjected to “suffering and unbearable hardships” since the company’s shut down in 2018.