By William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday December 12, 2007
THE trial of two public servants who allegedly diverted about ¢4.5 billion from public funds into their private accounts, a case that caused some heat between the Attorney-General (AG) and the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), has finally commenced at an Accra Fast Track High Court.
In court yesterday were Nicholas Sakyi, a deputy accountant and Joseph Kofi Yeboah, a senior accounts officer, both employees of the Controller and Accountant-Generals’ Department attached to the Department of Urban Roads in Kumasi.
The two allegedly started stealing the money in 2000 and by 2005, when the anomaly was detected, a walloping ¢4.5 billion was found to be siphoned.
They pleaded not guilty to six counts of stealing and were jointly granted ¢2 billion bail with two sureties to be justified until December 20, when the prosecution will call its first witness.
The case degenerated into a controversy between the AG and the BNI when it came to light in October at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearings that the case docket of the accused persons was missing.
Matters came to a head when the PAC in October 18, summoned the AG to appear before it to explain the delay in the prosecution of the case of the two men after an audit report had cited them for embezzlement.
The BNI had earlier told the committee in a reply to an enquiry that it sent the case docket to the AG’s Department for advice and was awaiting directive but the AG on October 23, had said there was no such docket in his outfit.
However on October 25, the controversy between the two bodies was resolved when the AG apologised to the BNI and cited misinformation and lack of proper record-keeping on the part of his department as the reason for the misunderstanding.
He then informed the PAC that the docket was found and preparations for trial of the two were underway.
At yesterday’s court sitting, Mr Atta Akyea, counsel for the accused, in applying for bail for them saying “they have already been admitted to bail by a current court and we would like the court to place similar bail conditions for them”.
William Kpobi, a Principal State Attorney, prosecuting the case, told the court presided over by Justice Kobena Acquaye that “we have no objection to the grant of bail except that they should appear to stand trial”.
The facts as presented by Mr Kpobi are that in 2000, the two men allegedly devised a scheme by which they embezzled money by altering cheques issued in favour of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as withholding taxes and operated until 2005 when the anomaly was detected.
The two allegedly opened a special private account at a rural bank in Kumasi in which they cashed and deposited the money.
The breakdown of the amount as 2000, ¢71 million; 2001, ¢69 million; 2002, ¢256 million; 2003, ¢878 million; 2004, ¢2.2 billion and 2005, ¢849 million.
Mr Kpobi further said in line with the grand design the two altered IRS cheques to read I.R. Samuel and Sons Limited, and J.E. Service Limited.
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