Gaming Commission turns to AG for guidance over GH₵5.1m lost investment
The Gaming Commission of Ghana has sought legal advice from the Attorney General’s Department over its inability to recover a GHS5.1 million investment made with SIC Financial Services Limited (SIC-FSL) in 2019.
The investment, which includes both principal and accrued interest, has remained unretrieved for years, raising concerns among auditors and key stakeholders.
Appearing before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday, 30th September, the Acting Gaming Commissioner, Emmanuel Siisi Quainoo, said several efforts to retrieve the funds have so far yielded no results.
“Before the infraction was even brought to my notice, I wrote to SIC-FSL demanding payment for the investment. They responded, saying that their funds had been escrowed at the Ministry of Finance and requested my assistance in retrieving it,” he explained.
Mr Quainoo said despite multiple letters and meetings with the Commission’s audit committee, the matter remains unresolved.
He added that SIC-FSL attributed its inability to refund the money to the aftershocks of the financial sector clean-up, which collapsed several banks and financial institutions. The company, he said, claimed to have appealed to the Ministry of Finance for the release of the escrowed funds but had received no response.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak told PAC that his ministry had advised the Commission to seek legal guidance from the Attorney General.
“What I did was to say, let’s write to the AG to advise because it is a government institution. Many citizens faced similar situations during the financial sector clean-up, and most have not recovered their money. This is not a straightforward matter,” he said.
PAC Chairperson, Abena Osei-Asare, welcomed the step but suggested that SIC-FSL’s challenges may have begun even before the banking sector crisis.
“I am glad you have written to the AG. The AG will respond, but as far as I know, SIC-FSL was in difficulty even before the banking issues started,” she noted.
