Trust influenced GHC150,000 investment in pastor’s company - Aggrieved customer

Customers who stormed a church, Zoe Embassy, to demand locked-up investment have said their trust for the leader of the church made them invest in his company without due diligence.

According to them they neither sort professional advice nor checked the registration status of EL Real Estates and Tikowre Capital with the regulator, the Security and Exchange Commission, because their trust in the head pastor was sufficient.

They added that even when other Microfinance institutions were going through crises, Pastor Kelvin Kobiri, owner of the companies and head pastor of Zoe Outreach Ministries was able to honour his companies financial obligations to them by paying ¢90,000 of the invested capital,¢150,000.

They, therefore, had no reason to doubt the pastor when he promised on 26th June 2019 that they were going to be paid on 31st June 2019. That failed.

That trust has now waned, they said on the Joy FM Super Morning Show Monday.

The customers, who have promised to lodge an official complaint with the police Monday morning, had failed on Sunday to use force to retrieve their locked up capital.

During church service at the Zoe Outreached Embassy on Sunday, some customers butted into the tongues speaking congregation and startled solemn worshippers with their shouts, insults and threats.

The chaos took several minutes to quell. The disappointed customers have promised to use every legal means to redeem their investment.

The current wave of panic withdrawals follows series of actions by the Bank of Ghana to clean the financial sector.

The Bank of Ghana has revoked the licences of 386 insolvent microfinance and microcredit companies.

This includes 192 microfinance companies having their licenses revoked with another 155 insolvent companies that have ceased operations also suffering the same fate.

The Central Bank in a press release Friday also revoked the licences of 29 insolvent microcredit companies.

BoG explained that regarding the microfinance companies, it took the action pursuant to section 123 (1) of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930).

This action requires the Central Bank to revoke the licence of a bank or Specialised Deposit-taking Institution (SDI) where the Bank of Ghana determines that the institution is insolvent or is likely to become insolvent within the next 60 days.

Consequently, the Bank of Ghana has appointed Eric Nipah as Receiver for the specified institutions in line with section 123 (2) of Act 930.