Prince Kofi Amoabeng

Prince Kofi Amoabeng is a Ghanaian businessman and retired army captain who co-founded Unique Trust Financial Services in 1997 and built it into UT Holdings and UT Bank. For a decade he was one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs in Ghana. Then, in August 2017, the Bank of Ghana revoked UT Bank's licence during its clean-up of the banking sector, and he has spent the years since fighting a criminal case and defending his record.

Bososo to the army

Amoabeng was born on 22 February 1952 at Bososo in the Eastern Region. He boarded at Penworth Preparatory School in Accra, went to St. Peter's Boys Senior High School at Nkwatia Kwahu and then Adisadel College, and graduated from the University of Ghana in 1975 with a second-class upper degree in administration.

He joined the Ghana Armed Forces in April 1975, was commissioned as a lieutenant that November and trained as an accountant with Britain's Royal Army Pay Corps. He left the army in 1982 with the rank of captain.

Building UT

In 1997 he and Joseph Nsonamoa set up Unique Trust Financial Services, a non-bank lender that started with three staff. It grew into UT Holdings, a group with subsidiaries in Ghana, elsewhere in Africa and in Europe, and later into UT Bank.

The awards followed. He was Marketing Man of the Year in 2006, received the Order of the Volta in 2008, was voted Ghana's Most Respected CEO in 2008, 2010 and 2012, and won Overall Best Entrepreneur at the Ghana Entrepreneurs Awards in 2011. He was also profiled in Moky Makura's book on Africa's greatest entrepreneurs.

Collapse and court

By the mid-2010s UT Bank was struggling. On 14 August 2017 the Bank of Ghana revoked its licence, together with Capital Bank's, citing severe impairment of capital, and handed its deposits and branches to GCB Bank.

In January 2020 prosecutors charged Amoabeng with stealing and money laundering involving about GH¢59.9 million. The state discontinued that case in February 2020, saying it would bring fresh charges. In December 2025 he said he had been "in court for 7 years", that the authorities had taken his passport and closed his bank account, and that the case had been designed for political ends. His lawyers were weighing a submission of no case to answer.

In 2025 he published The UT Story, his account of the bank's rise and fall, which includes the Bank of Ghana's revocation letter. He argues that UT was treated unfairly and that his appeals for help to the government of the day were ignored.