The Accra High Court has ordered the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to produce the statements of account of defunct Capital Bank, on March 10.
The central bank’s Governor, Dr Ernest Addison, is to personally make available the said documents or instruct the appropriate department to present the account documents at 11am on the said date.
The instruction comes after counsel for William Ato Essien, who is standing trial for the collapse of Capital Bank, prayed for the court to compel the central bank to produce the said documents.
The trial judge Eric Kyei Baffour agreed to their request on Thursday 3 March 2022.
“I accede to the request of learned counsel for the first accused and order the registrar of the court to seal a subpoena directed at the Governor of Bank of Ghana who shall direct the appropriate department of the bank of Ghana that is in charge of the statement of account of commercial banks to produce the bank statements of the capital bank from June 2015 to August 2017,” the judge directed.
Background
Capital Bank was one of the first banks that collapsed after a massive clean-up of financial institutions by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) starting in 2017.
On August 14, 2017, its licence and UT Bank were revoked by the BoG after the BoG had declared them insolvent.
The BoG allowed the state-owned bank, the GCB Bank, to acquire the two banks to protect depositors’ funds and enable them to stay afloat.
The hurricane that swept through the banking sector due to the collapse of the two banks heightened in August 2018 when the central bank collapsed five other indigenous banks and merged them into one entity — Consolidated Bank, Ghana.
Charges
The accused have been slapped with stealing contrary to section 23 (1) and 124 (1) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29), Money Laundering contrary to section 1 (1) (a) of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2008 (Act 749) and conspiracy to stealing contrary to section 23 (1) and 124 (1) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29).
In all, the founder of the defunct bank William Ato Essien is charged with eight counts of stealing, eight counts of money laundering and three counts of conspiracy to stealing, making it a total of 19 counts.
The Managing Director of MC Management Services, Tetteh Nettey, faces two counts of stealing, two counts of money laundering and two counts of conspiracy to steal, making his a total of 6 counts.
On the other hand, the Managing Director of the bank Fitzgerald Odonkor, is charged with seven counts of abetment of crime, namely stealing.
The state estimates that the accused persons have misappropriated GHC 262,500,000.00.
Another person, Kate Quartey-Papafio, CEO of Reroy Cables, who was earlier facing three counts of conspiracy to steal, stealing and money laundering, was acquitted and discharged by the court for lack of evidence.