By Frank Amponsah
The increasing rate of Ponzi Schemes which have become one of the major conduits of financial fraud across the world have seen greater light in Ghana under the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime.
It has been established that the NDC governments have offered a stable environment for the Ponzi scam business to grow.
Interestingly, all the scams of huge magnitude that rocked the country and frustrated Ghanaians happened under NDC administration with almost all of them starting under an NDC administration.
Over the years, scams such as R5, Pyram, Onward Investments, God is Love, Care for Humanity, Buoyant, Little Drop, DKM, Menzbank and now Menzgold among others, have all been undcoered under the NDC regime due to the porous financial system and ineffective systems its cgovernments run.
Many people have begun asking why the NDC regimes became safe haven for such fraudulent activities.
Meanwhile, our findings about scams revealed that they suddenly collapsed when the NDC is out of power.
The current predicament of Menzgold came about due to the fact that the current financial regime does not support scam businesses.
A financial analyst who commented on the issue said: “The NDC was everywhere crying for acknowledgement for everything that happened before the NPP came to power, they wanted to be credited for everything. Do they put up the same posture for the Menzgold mess?”
Meanwhile, last week, an Accra High Court gave the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the green light to go ahead and scrutinise the operation of Menzgold Ghana Limited as it dismissed a suit filed by the gold dealership company against the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and SEC.
This was after the court, presided over by Mrs Justice Akua Sarpomaa Amoah, upheld the preliminary objection raised by BoG and SEC.
BoG and SEC contended that Menzgold did not exhaust all the regulatory mechanisms for redress before going to court.
SEC is expected to collaborate with security and law enforcement agencies, as well as the civil service, to scrutinise Menzgold.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, after rightly determining that it has the power to regulate Menzgold, wrote to the company to suspend recruitment of new customers in its gold collectible business.
SEC also asked Menzgold to submit all documents on its operations for scrutiny.
According to the regulator, if after scrutiny the business model proves sustainable, SEC would then license Menzgold.
However, Menzgold wrote to SEC, arguing that the regulator lacks authority to regulate it, and refused to submit documents to SEC.
To stop SEC from taking further action, Menzgold, in September 2018, sued BoG/SEC, arguing that the two regulators lack the legal authority to regulate its business.
It then proceeded to court praying for an order directing BoG and SEC to desist from interfering in its activities.
Menzgold further prayed the court to restrain the two institutions from further publishing any alleged derogatory notices concerning its operations.
Due to the suit, SEC could not proceed further with its investigations.
Now that the court has settled the matter, SEC can proceed with further actions.
