The Bank of Uganda (BoU) revoked the banking license of Global Trust Bank Limited on 25th July 2014 under the provisions of the Financial Institutions Act, 2004 and immediately placed it under statutory liquidation. The Bank’s assets and liabilities were later acquired by Dfcu Bank.
The Central Bank now says the liquidation process has been concluded successfully.
In a statement Tuesday, BoU Governor, Tumusiime Mutebile announced the completion of the liquidation process.
“Bank of Uganda hereby informs the General Public that the statutory liquidation of Global Trust Bank Ltd has been effectively concluded.”
Global Trust Bank (GTB) was closed after failing to become commercially viable but most importantly protect customers’ deposits.
Having been established in 2008, GTB had incurred persistent losses, which had accumulated to Shs60bn.
“There has been no improvement in the bank’s financial performance in the last five years and there is no realistic prospect that it would ever become profitable in the future,” Mutebile said then.
He added, “… there were serious deficiencies in the governance of GTB and the accuracy of the financial information it reported to the BOU.
However, following the 2018 parliamentary investigations into the operations of Bank of Uganda, a number of irregularities were cited in the process of selling Global Trust Bank to Dfcu.
It emerged for instance that the central bank never managed Global Trust bank for a minimum of six months as required by the Financial Institutions Act, before selling it off.
A forensic audit report by the Auditor General also found that there were no guidelines and regulations to guide the identification of the entity that assumed the assets and liabilities of Global Trust Bank.
