Ebenezer Ashiagbor, a manager of the Ashiaman branch of Everbond Microcredit, has allegedly stolen over half a million Ghana cedis from his employers.
He has, therefore, been slapped with five counts including stealing when he appeared before an Accra Circuit Court presided over by Rosemary Baah Torsuon Tuesday, this week.
He pleaded not guilty to all the charges and was admitted to bail in the sum of GH¢800,000.00 with one surety to be justified.
The court has adjourned the case to April 5, 2023 for continuation.
Narrating the case to the court, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Seth Frimpong said the complainant in the case is the Head of Internal Control and Audit of Everbond Microcredit, while the accused, Ebenezer Ashiagbor, held the position of Ashiaman branch manager of the firm.
According to him, the company provides financial services, including deposit taking and granting of loans to its customers.
He said from the year 2020 to August 2021 the Ashiaman branch of the company, under the control of the accused person granted various amounts to its customers as loans, with specific repayment periods.
Although these customers allegedly repaid their loans, those who had used cash deposit as collateral, these funds did not reflect in the company’s books.
The alarming defaults became a grave concern to management at Everbond Microcredit head office and, therefore, launched an investigation into the matter.
Pursuant to this, somewhere in December 2020 the complainant began to contact the defaulting customers who rather disclosed that they have made various amounts of loan repayments to the accused.
Management of Everbond became alarmed and, therefore, took into consideration 14 testimonies of customers who contracted a loan from the company to show that the accused indeed received the loan repayments, but failed to account for the whole sum.
He said apart from the testimonies, there were other records pointing to the fact that the accused received the loan repayments from the customers, but short changed the Everbond Microcredit head office over the period of 2020 to August, 2021.
The matter was reported to the Economic Crime Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Headquarters and the accused was arrested.
ASP Frimpong added that the accused admitted the offence during interrogation but disputed the initial amounted of GH¢220,000.00 quoted by the complainant.
The accused then requested for an audit by an external independent audit firm to assist in the investigation, for which EKA audit firm was contracted to conduct a forensic audit.
The audit firm duly conducted the audit and presented their report to which it was discovered that the accused person dishonestly appropriated an amount of GH¢408,832.00 being part of the loan repayment by customers that he failed to account for.
Furthermore, it was also discovered that an amount of GH¢124,000.00 which was identified as part of savings deposit made by customers as cash collateral in support of their loans was not accounted for.
The court was told that at the end of the investigation, it was revealed that the accused dishonestly appropriated a total amount of GH¢532,832.00 as stated by the audit report.
On March 4, 2022 law enforcement officers proceeded to the house of the accused and after a search, they retrieved two official loan repayment receipts of Everbond Microcredit, with serial numbers 000508 dated August 26, 2020 and 000509 dated September 2, 2020 with respective values of GHC50,000 and GH¢210,000 being loan repayments by Victor Joe Akpah of Winterman Company Limited to Everbond Microcredit.
As usual, he stated that the accused failed to account for the loan repayment he received from Winterman Company Limited. The prosecutor added that after investigation, he was charged with the offence.
