Fidelity Bank Threatens To Sue Bright Simons
Fidelity Bank is threatening to sue Bright Simons, the Vice President in charge of Research at IMANI Africa, if he fails to render an unqualified apology and retract a recent publication that accused the bank of selling dollars above rate to the Electricity Company of Ghana.
Simons in a post on X formerly Twitter called for urgent clarification about the transaction between the ECG and the Bank which according to him, had the state company “dishing out GHC80 million for free to Fidelity Bank in sweetheart exchange rate deals”.
“Unless ECG knows something about the “true value” of the Cedi that the rest of the market doesn’t,” he added.
A reaction from Benjamin Boakye, the Executive Director of Africa Centre for Energy Policy’s post said the bank was selling dollars to the company at GHS13.95 instead of the GHS12 market rate accumulating into losses above GHS80 million.
“@thebankofghana’s Exchange rate in October 2023 was less than GHS11.5 to the $ and commercial Banks ~GHS12. ECG was buying the $ @GHS13.95, creating exchange losses above GHS80 million in one month for buying $43m. we will trend exchange losses for a year and report. “
The Bank in response debunked the allegations, adding it had impacted its operations negatively.
“We categorically state that this information is false and misleading and we have not had any FX deal with ECG at a rate that is not in line with the prevailing market rate.”
Though it said it had sourced foreign exchange on behalf of ECG in 2023, it argued that they were not sold above the market rate as peddled.
“We have all records of transactions with ECG and would like to emphasize that no foreign exchange has ever been sold to ECG above the market rates, and in some instances, they were sold significantly below the market rate. All records are also available at the Central Bank and can be verified.”
The Bank highlighted that it reserves its right to take legal actions against Simons if he fails to retract and apologise for the publication.
“We wish to state that owing to the false and misleading publication by Bright Simon and its negative impact on the Bank, we have instructed our Solicitors to demand the immediate retraction of the publication and an unqualified apology from the author, Bright Simons.
“We have further instructed our Solicitors to commence legal action against the author and all other persons who have published the said false statement, in the event that the author fails to comply with our demand.”
Meanwhile, Simons has responded to the release calling for a declaration of the said rate at which the dollars were sold to the ECG.
“Fidelity Bank of Ghana says that it sold all the dollars it bought from Bank of Ghana & the ‘open market’ to ECG at the SAME RATE they were sourced. And that sometimes they sold BELOW MARKET RATE. The issue is simple: WHAT WAS THIS RATE? Was it at the 13.95 ECG reported or not?
“This ECG-Fidelity exchange rate matter should not be left at ‘he said, she said’. We are talking about potential losses exceeding one Billion Ghana Cedis ($100 million). This is not a small matter that can just be brushed aside with one dismissive press release,” he tweeted.
