An old photo of Capt Kofi Amoabeng (far right with back turned) with some of his workers
In his third and final volume of recollections of his life and primarily everything that had to do with his now defunct bank, UT Bank, Capt Prince Kofi Amoabeng (rtd), shares details of the day his bank was ‘rudely’ locked out of business, very early on the first working day of a week in 2017.
Titled, ‘The UT Bank Story Vol. 3: Fateful Decisions,’ authored alongside George Bentum Essiaw, the celebrated banker described how, as early as 6AM on Monday, August 14, 2017, he received the most uncomfortable news about his bank, although initially, as he wrote, he didn’t imagine it was about his business.
This was because when he returned to his room upstairs in his residence at Kukurantumi, where he had a habit for leaving behind his phone while on his religious morning habits, he was met by 63 missed phone calls.
“While observing this early morning ritual, I always left my cell phone behind in the upstairs bedroom. It was only after I returned to the bedroom that I attended to my cell phone. And because I’m a creature of habit, I observed this routine with religious dedication.
“… It was only in the morning, after I had had my hot cocoa and caught up with the news downstairs, returned to the bedroom, and was comfortably ensconced in the water closet, that I checked for the first time whatever messages or phone calls I may have missed during the night while I slept, or early in the morning while I was observing my rituals,” he wrote.
He continued to narrate how he saw the missed calls: “When I checked my messages and missed calls that morning, I realised I had missed 63 calls and several messages! Goodness me! What on earth could’ve happened to warrant 63 missed calls? I don’t quite remember, but my heart might’ve skipped a beat!
“I didn’t know what to make of the numerous missed calls. What the heck was going on? In my desperation to find an answer, I imagined the worst: surely something awful must’ve happened to one of my children! That was the worst thing I could think of. Oh my God, don’t let it be any pf my children, please, I prayed silently.”
Capt Kofi Amoabeng said he had another thought in mind regarding his bank but that “didn’t jump to the forefront of my mind.”
What then, had happened?
In his own words, which are captured in the opening lines of the prologue of the book, he wrote:
“14th August, 2017, 5:46 am, Manet Towers, Airport City…
“A group of officials from the Bank of Ghana (BoG), flanked by well-armed police personnel, under the eager lenses and microphones of media personnel from several media houses, have gathered expectantly at the head offices of UT Bank. No matter how one looks at it, this gathering is unusual.
“The questions were aplenty.
“Why would BoG officials, under heavy police protection, gather at a bank’s premises? Why so early in the morning? What urgent business were they there to conduct which could not wait a couple of hours until the bank opened its doors for business? Why the heavy police presence? Who invited the media? What were they doing at the premises of a bank, an indigenous-owned, publicly listed bank, for that matter?
“The answer would soon unfold…
“At about 6 am, the unusual gathering of the three distinct groups of people mentioned above thronged the front doors of the plush UT Bank head office. With sheer alacrity, the BoG officials, under the protection of the armed police personnel, locked out the bank staff with the padlocks they had brought along with them. After firmly securing the doors, they pulled down the UT Bank signage with wanton abandon as though it was an occultic item and replaced it with GCB Bank signage.
“To the casual observer, the whole scene could easily have passed for an ill-thought-out, amateur action film sequence executed by an enthusiastic, inexperienced film director. And to think all these were done right under the lenses and microphones of the media on that early morning when the bank was not expected to commence business until much later suggested that, indeed, it was all well-orchestrated by the powers that be without so much as a clue, whatsoever, by the owners of the bank.”
Capt Prince Kofi Amoabeng later described what led to this rather unexpected turn of events for his business, referring it to “an issue with the bank, which was encountering some liquidity challenges that we had been diligently trying to resolve.”
AE
