Directors of collapsed banks, such as UniBank, UT, and Beige Bank, have the option to negotiate for settlements outside of court before the trial commences, as stated by Deputy Attorney General Alfred Tuah-Yeboah.
While the state remains committed to prosecuting the directors of these financial institutions, this approach offers an avenue for resolution.
This announcement follows the recent imprisonment of William Ato Essien, the former Chief Executive Officer of the now-defunct Capital Bank, who was convicted of embezzlement.
“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.
“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,” he is reported to have said.
The Bank of Ghana revoked the licenses of UT Bank, Unibank, and Beige Bank as part of the financial sector cleanup between 2017 and 2019.