A Deputy Attorney-General has said the decision to prosecute the founder of defunct Capital Bank, Ato Essien and three others was not informed by bias.
Joseph Dindiok Kpemka said the Department had to properly review the charges against the accused persons before proceeding to court.
“When did the dockets of these banks come to the Attorney General? That’s what you should be asking yourself, not when they came down…the investigators had to do a lot more and even when they came with it and we reviewed it, we realised that there were still a lot of gaps [with the charges],” he said on Newsfile.
The Member of Parliament for Tempane constituency also explained that the Attorney-General’s department will not rush into prosecuting an individual or group without substantive facts.
Charges
The founder of defunct Capital Bank, William Ato Essien, and the three other persons have been charged by the state with 26 offences for their roles leading to the collapse of the bank in 2017.
Fitzgerald Odonkor, former CEO of the Bank; Dr Tetteh Nettey, owner of MC Management Services Ltd and Kate Quartey-Papafio, CEO of Reroy Cables Ltd, were cited in the charge sheet presented to the Accra High Court.
The charges include conspiracy to steal citing Mr Ato Essien and Tettey Nettey acting together between October and November 2015 in Accra to steal GH¢100 million belonging to Capital Bank.
There was also the charge of abetment which cited Mr Odonkor assisting Mr Ato Essien and Mr Nettey to dishonestly appropriate Capital Bank’s GH¢100 million between the same timeline.
The four were also cited for laundering money between October and November in 2015 in Accra as they converted ¢100 million knowing it was proceeds of crime.
However, critics say there were more people involved in the banking crisis that hit the country in 2017.
Thus the state has picked these four persons, out of the many, for prosecution.
Government critics say the prosecution of the four persons is due to the mounting pressure from the public.
But Joseph Kpemka speaking on Newsfile, a current affairs programme on Joy FM/MultiTV on Saturday, said the delay was due to late submission of dockets to the Attorney-General’s office.
source:myjoyonline
