The spokesperson of the Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of the 53 Collapsed Fund Management Companies, Charles Nyame and one other person have been arrested for unlawful picketing.
Members of the coalition besieged the premises of the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday, September 1, 2020, to stage a protest in connection with their locked-up funds.
Mr Nyame, who was handcuffed and put into the bucket of a pickup truck along with the other suspect, yelled to the media: “I am being arrested because we are making noise about our monies, we are not cocaine dealers for the government to confiscate our funds for over two years.
“What is the government doing? Are we cocaine dealers? Are we money launderers? Are we slaves in our country? We are not afraid; they should kill us; we are ready to die.
“I am being molested by the police, they slapped me because I am protesting for my money,” he shouted.
The protest comes a day after the coalition described as “misleading” and “deceptive”, the reasons given by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for excluding them from the bailout package being accorded customers of the collapsed fund managers.
SEC had said because BlackShield (formerly Gold Coast Fund Management) was challenging the revocation of its licence in court, its customers cannot be beneficiaries of the bailout.
However, speaking to journalists at a press conference in Accra, Mr Nyame said: “We consider the reasons given by the SEC as misleading and deceptive.
“The government also issued a bailout to other customers of companies that are also in court to contest their revocation.
“It is, therefore, questionable how the government and SEC decided to apply the rules differently.
“The actions by the government and SEC are mischievous and dishonest, especially when the government is aware that the court is on legal vacation.
“We hereby call on the government to rethink and include all BlackShield customers in the bailout package since advancing the bailout package does not amount to any interference in the court process,” he noted.
Meanwhile, the management of BlackShield Company Limited has denied claims by SEC that the company has not submitted verified data on its clients to enable them benefit from the government’s bailout package for customers of the now-defunct firms.
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