Menzgold Company Limited has denied claims by the Central Bank that it receives deposits from its customers.
According to the gold buying and trading firm, their operations are legal and covered by the license they received from the Ghana minerals commission.
The Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Johnson Asiamah, on Tuesday told the Public Accounts Committee that the operation of Menzgold is not approved by the bank and therefore people must be careful in doing business with them.
“Only last week we published a notification in the newspaper about MenzGold to the effect that we have not licensed them to accept deposits because to accept deposits you need a license from Bank of Ghana and we have not licensed them for that purpose, and hence if you go ahead to do business with them it’s at your own risk” he cautioned.
“The Minerals Commission has given them a license to purchase gold so based on that we cannot just get up and close them down. There has to be evidence that they are accepting deposits thereby flouting our regulations. So we took the first step by notifying the public and it came out in quite a number of the newspapers that these people are not to accept deposits and if they ask you to give them money you should not do so,” he said.
Reacting to the claims by the Central Bank, the company in a statement said “We do not take money on or for the purposes of deposit whatsoever. All currencies brought to our outfit are brought for the purposes of either for gold purchase or commission payments. And clearly, the Ghana Cedi is the note issued on statutory authority which is the legal tender for the payment of any amount. If we cannot accept money in our outfit as indicated by the highly revered deputy governor of the public in his submission before the public accounts committee that our company MenzGold buys and sells gold then how are we expected to conduct our legally permissible business as patriotic law abiding citizens of Ghana.
“As law abiding patriotic corporate citizens, we are eagerly in anticipation when the bank of Ghana shall forward a memorandum to the legislative assembly or an outfit that be, prescribing the good old noble act of buying and selling, taking specified goods on credit to pay at a later date, import and export, business partnerships with understanding between parties to split profit 50% on both sides or by whatever means measuring any proportion in relation to a home to be ratified as banking business just because parties are discharging their contractual obligations by way of money exchanging hands as being banking business and we would gladly and hastily submit to their directions,” the statement said.
It concluded: “ In our bid as good corporate citizen of Ghana, we do not receive monetary deposits whatsoever for any purpose. Therefore we are not in breach of section 6(1) of act 930”.
