The mother company of Unicredit Savings and Loans Company - Hoda Holdings Limited has sued Dr Ernest Addison and the Bank of Ghana for revoking the license of the company. In the company’s affidavit filed at the Human Rights Division of the High Court on Monday, Hoda Holdings said its funds of over GHS 54 million were locked up with Unibank before it was forced to cease operations by the central bank in 2018 and it has since been trying to retrieve it.

Hoda Holdings wants “An Order of Certiorari directed at the 1^st and 2^nd Respondents to bring up to this Hnourable Court for the purpose of being Quashed the Notice Dated the 15^th day of August, 2019 declaring Unicredit Ghana Limited insolvent and revoking the license of Unicredit Ghana Limited to operate as a Specilized Deposit taking Institution

An Order of Intelocutory Injunction restraining the Respondents, their agents, assigns, privies hirelings or otherwise howsoever described from interfering with the Operations of Unicredit Ghana Limited and to refer the Subject matter of the Instant Application to Arbitration.”

Shareholders In a statement earlier, the shareholders of UniCredit said “ uniCredit had at all material times in our engagements with the Regulators drawn their attention to this difficulty. The efforts of the Board and Management to retrieve the said funds yielded no positive results. Again, the BoG further sighted the exposure of uniCredit to uniSecurities as a core reason for the revocation. It must be pointed out that during onsite examination by officials of BoG, the institution was directed to reduce the exposure by getting a collateral to secure the total investments and exposure with uniSecurities. This was duly complied with and the relevant details provided to the Regulator.”

The statement concludes that, “The Shareholders, Board and Management have always cooperated with the  Regulator to fashion out a solution to deal with the liquidity challenge and also other regulatory benchmarks. It was the expectation of the Shareholders, Board  and  Management  that  the  solution  was  going  to  help  deal  with customers’ withdrawal demands and also secure the jobs of 600 direct employees.”

The Bank of Ghana (BoG) revoked the licences of twenty-three insolvent savings and loans companies and finance house companies last Friday and also appointed Eric Nipah as a Receiver for the specified institutions in line with section 123 (2) of Act 930. According to a statement from BoG, “The revocation of the licences of these institutions has become necessary because they are insolvent even after a reasonable period within which the Bank of Ghana has engaged with them in the hope that they would be recapitalized by their shareholders to return them to solvency.”