Private legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu, has observed that enough forensic investigations were not done on the banks that collapsed during the financial sector reforms undertaken by the Bank of Ghana (BoG).
He believes that more could have been done to investigate the banks that collapsed.
Mr. Kpebu suggested to the Attorney-General (A-G) to delegate some of its powers to lawyers who are non-aligned to any of the political parties to be able to further probe the matter.
Speaking on the Key Points on TV3, Saturday, October 14, he said “The A-G has all the powers to prosecute but like the way they have given Special Prosecutor some of the powers, maybe it is about time they will give power to Special Council, like in the US they do.
“Beyond the OSP, the Attorney-General can still delegate the powers to maybe, a private lawyer, then he can go into it.
“Let us begin to build the institutions once we accept that the Attorney-General can delegate the power and the A-G has done it for several institutions where they prosecute their own cases.
“So we should look at giving it to a private lawyer who is independent, not affiliated with the government then we can do further investigations.”
He was commenting on the jailing of the Chief Executive Officer of the defunct Capital Bank, William Ato Essien.
It is recalled that the Bank of Ghana issued a press release on August 14, 2017, announcing the revocation of the license of Capital Bank due to insolvency.
UT Bank, Unibank, and Beige Bank also had their licenses revoked by the central bank during the financial sector clean-up exercise that took place from 2017 to 2019.
Ato Essien, was subsequently slapped with a total jail term of 95 years for multiple counts of stealing and money laundering. These sentences are to run concurrently hence, he will be spending 15 years in jail.
Despite reaching an agreement to refund GHC90 million to the state, he only managed to refund GHC37 million, hence the imposition of the custodial sentence.
Also commenting on this matter, Deputy Attorney-General Alfred Tuah-Yeboah said that the GHS37 million that was retrieved from Ato Essien was better than none.
He stated that in the history of Ghana, it has never happened that such an amount of money has been retrieved from persons who go through a trial of this nature for the same offense.
“The GHS37 million is better than none,” Mr Tuah Yeboah said on the same show.
“There hasn’t been a situation where the state has been able to recover from one person million. In most of the cases, the accused are tried, sentenced, go to prison, serve their term sometimes are pardoned, they come back home and enjoy,” he added.
He further stated “Having been able to recover GHS37 Million is a positive step. The GHS37 million is quite reasonable, it is not up to half but the state has benefited from this case.”
Earlier, while speaking to TV3 after the sentencing, on Thursday, October 12, the Deputy Attorney-General said “Effectively, he has been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. This is a matter that started long ago and last year, he decided to enter into an agreement for him to take advantage of section 35.
“We were expecting that he would go by the agreement that we had but unfortunately on his part, he could not fulfill his part of the bargain. As we speak he has been able to pay close to about 37 million Cedis and because of his inability to pay the rest, per the agreement that we had, the court had the right to sentence him to a prison term and the court just did that.
“I am yet to get the full complement of the orders of the court, now that he has been imprisoned if he gets the money to pay that is another ballgame to look at because after a court has given its ruling or judgment the court becomes functus officio. So. my expectation is that when he pays then he goes into mitigation when he wants to appeal the sentence.
“Let’s hope that he gets the money to pay. Let us also add that even if he is going to serve the 15 years Ghanaians have also benefited somehow because at least 37 million Cedis has been paid to the state. if he had been sentenced last year we wouldn’t have even recovered this.”
Asked for his response on the other cases and whether or not the state is focused on retrieving the money from those directors too, Mr Tuah-Yeboah said “As we speak we have other cases in court, Beige bank is in court, we are hearing the matter. UT is also in court, we have other banks, like Duffuor’s bank (Unibank) all in court, and we are doing them one after the other.
“If the money that we have lost they are ready to refund the money we will look at section 35 and go by that and we can have the same agreement.
“Our preoccupation is to ensure that justice is done, this can be done either we get the money or if we don’t get we go to the full hog and get the judgment and if they are convicted so be it. So if any of the others facing trial are of the opinion that they want to use section 35, nobody stops them because it is not limited to Ato Essien, it is limited to all other people but we are still prosecuting our cases in court.”