Baffour Awuah’s EOCO case reopens Equity Savings & Loans file as SIC recovery battle emerges

A dispute over the Economic and Organised Crime Office’s attempt to arrest Manhyia South Member of Parliament and private legal practitioner Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah has unexpectedly brought the troubled Equity Savings and Loans Limited back into the spotlight.

Beyond the dramatic scenes at the Accra High Court on September 23, 2026 a more consequential financial story has emerged from Baffour Awuah’s explanation of why EOCO had been engaging his former law firm, Sarkodie Baffour Awuah & Partners.

According to the MP, the investigation is connected to legal work his firm carried out for SIC Life Savings and Loans Company Limited in an attempt to recover millions of cedis from Equity Savings and Loans.

EOCO says it attempted to arrest Baffour Awuah after he failed to honour two invitations issued in February 2026. His law firm disputes that account, saying the letters were addressed to him in his then-described capacity as Senior Partner and that another representative of the firm subsequently appeared before EOCO on March 4, March 18 and April 30, providing investigators with information and a written statement.

But on JoyNews’ PM Express on Wednesday night, Baffour Awuah went further, providing what he said was the background to the transaction at the centre of EOCO’s interest.

From about GH¢3.5m to GH¢14m

Baffour Awuah said SIC Life Savings and Loans had invested approximately GH¢3.5 million with Equity Savings and Loans. Equity subsequently defaulted, he said, and with accumulated interest, the obligation eventually rose to roughly GH¢14 million. His law firm was then instructed to recover the money.

“My office was instructed as lawyers for SIC savings and loans in respect of a debt. The MD had invested money in a company called Equity Savings and Loans during the first term of President Mahama. The total investment at the time was about ¢3.5 million. They defaulted in payment. Over time, the interest had grown to about ¢14 million.”

The lawyers then sued Equity and eventually obtained summary judgment against the company. Winning the case, however, did not immediately translate into recovering the money.

Baffour Awuah told Evans Mensah on PM Express that enforcing the judgment became extremely difficult because the lawyers struggled to identify assets belonging to Equity that could be attached. He said the recovery effort dragged on for about two years, during which Equity made payments amounting to more than GH¢1 million.

“It was so difficult to enforce the judgment because we couldn’t put a finger on an asset of theirs… it was hell for 2 years. All lawyers will tell you that when you do debt recovery unless you recover as a lawyer you don’t make any money and so a lot of the fees are frontloaded you don’t make any money at all unless you recover for 2 years we’re doing this case without recovering anything.”

The Oyibi property and settlement

A breakthrough came when the lawyers received information that Equity had land at Oyibi which could potentially be attached to satisfy the judgment. But after they moved against the property, another company appeared in court claiming Equity had already sold the land to it.

SIC’s lawyers prepared to litigate the ownership claim, but the company claiming the land instead sought a negotiated resolution because it did not want its development project caught up in prolonged litigation.

“The lawyer is only a conveyor belt. SIC rejected a few of the initial proposals. So SIC savings and loans then came to the conclusion that if you take the proposal together with the legal fees together with what has been paid already they are recovering about ¢8m and so the board at the time decided that they’ve accepted it.”

The Equity question never went away

The disclosure matters because Equity Savings and Loans was already the subject of serious concerns months before the latest EOCO controversy.

In June, JoyNews reported that numerous customers said they had been unable to access money deposited with the institution, with some branches closed and customers reporting repeated difficulties withdrawing their funds.

The Vanishing Crisis: Inside the Equity Savings and Loans crisis

A subsequent JoyNews investigation found branches in East Legon, Dome and New Town closed during verification visits and reported that attempts to contact the company through its listed telephone numbers and email had been unsuccessful at the time.

One customer said nearly GH¢150,000 accumulated through years of savings had become inaccessible. Another said he initially sought to withdraw GH¢80,000 to restock his import business but could not obtain the money.

Equity Savings and Loans is still listed by the Bank of Ghana as a licensed savings and loans company despite the complaints and apparent inactivity at some of its premises. That makes Baffour Awuah’s latest account significant beyond his personal dispute with EOCO.

If his narration is accurate, an institutional creditor seeking millions of cedis from Equity had to obtain a court judgment, spend roughly two years looking for assets and ultimately negotiate a settlement after difficulties enforcing that judgment.

For ordinary customers who say they remain unable to access their savings, that history raises an obvious question: what assets remain available to meet Equity’s other obligations?

What happened to Equity’s assets?

JoyNews’ earlier investigation found that Equity Savings and Loans was incorporated in November 2011 and operated branches including East Legon, Dome, Kasoa, New Town and Kaneshie.

Corporate records reviewed at the time listed Isaac Arthur as Managing Director and identified Kofi Duffour, Ankrah Kusi Bandoh, Christopher Kwasi Agyemang and Buadi Badoe as beneficial owners as of February 2023.

For affected customers, however, the central issue remains recovery.

The new information emerging from Baffour Awuah’s account now adds another dimension: years before depositors publicly described their difficulties, another financial institution was itself struggling through the courts to recover a substantial obligation from Equity.

It raises questions about when Equity’s liquidity and asset problems began, how extensive its liabilities became, what assets were available to meet those liabilities and what regulators knew about its financial condition.

EOCO investigation remains active

EOCO has not publicly laid out the full substance of its investigation. There are also competing allegations about the transactions being investigated.

Former Tamale Central MP and private legal practitioner Inusah Fuseini, appearing on the same edition of PM Express, alleged that Baffour Awuah received fees above the legally allowable limit in a transaction he described as involving SSNIT and Equity Savings & Loans and said other transactions were also under investigation.

“So yes, it’s true he was a lawyer. Yes, it’s true that he’s a senior partner. Yes, it’s true that he entered into a negotiated settlement of the issue. Yes, he received a lower sum in satisfaction of the larger sum. Yes, he took fees that was more than the legal allowable fee limits.”

Those remain allegations, and the precise relationship, if any, between that transaction and the SIC Life Savings and Loans matter described by Baffour Awuah requires clarification.

Baffour Awuah maintains that there was nothing improper about his role in the SIC transaction and says he acted on instructions received from his client during the recovery and settlement process.

But beyond the confrontation between an MP and EOCO, the disclosures have reopened a much older and perhaps more important question.

What happened inside Equity Savings and Loans — and when will the customers who say their money remains trapped finally know whether, and how, they will be paid?