Four people who stole GH1,262,496.66 from Best Point Savings and Loans Limited were given a combined 20-year prison sentence.
They were convicted by an Accra Circuit Court, following which, the four sobbed uncontrollably, and several family members reached out to hold the prisoners’ hands before they were led from the courthouse.
Silas Adjei, a former company IT officer, was given a seven-year prison term by the court that Justice Malike Wornya, a High Court Judge who had served as a Circuit Court Judge, presided over.
A Supporting Officer of the Company named Kwadwo Kudekor was also given a three-year prison term.
Patience James Afadzie, a trader, and Adjei, a mobile seller, and Silas’ sister, will each spend five years in prison. The charges against Silas and Kudekor included conspiracy and theft. Money laundering and unauthorized interference with electronic records were further charges brought against Silas.
Patience and Afadzie were detained for aiding criminal activity and accepting money Silas had stolen dishonestly. According to reports, Silas bought more than 18 vehicles and other assets.
Best Point Savings and Loans Limited was identified as the complaint by the prosecution, which was headed by Senior State Attorney Mr. Richard Gyambiby.
According to the prosecution, Patience was Silas and Patience’s husband Afadzie’s sister. According to the State, the Company began using the Bankers Realm financial software, which was acquired from Kenya, in January 2014.
The State said that during operations, management made the decision to purchase and switch to a new system after realizing that the Company’s system had some shortcomings.
The prosecution claimed that at the conclusion of the 2015 fiscal year, the Company began the transition from the old Bankers Realm software to the new X100 format.
It stated that following the completion of a successful conversion test in December 2015, a new conversion test was conducted in January 2016 for staff training using an updated database.
According to the prosecution, a different database was also converted for the new software’s user acceptability test. It stated that on March 18, 2016, a final database called “Go Live” was also converted once all the tests were finished.
Some anomalies between the old and the new software were found, according to the prosecution, during the final conversion as the data was being checked. The validation, according to the statement, also showed that there had been a transaction worth GHC 1,262,496.66. Software developers from Global Union System supported this assertion.
The prosecution claimed that the transactions came from four distinct accounts but looked the same. It stated that the several accounts were in the names of Silas’ accomplices who are still at large, Patience and Afadzie, one Asante Seth, aka Precious Havor, and Theophilus Aboagye, or Dennis Amankwa.
Investigations, according to the prosecution, revealed Silas had fictitiously and illegally credited the accounts with different amounts of money and removed the transactions from the final database for migration onto the Company’s new system.
The prosecution claims that it was found that the narration of those transactions had been changed to “interest accrued,” and the same had been made to appear as though the transaction had been completed automatically by the system with all of its characteristic elements erased.
It stated that Silas had left the Company just as the disparities were found, in the last stages of the migration.
During the probe, the prosecution stated that Kudekor had examined and executed transactions on the four distinct accounts on multiple times, with two of the names on the accounts having different photographs.
According to the prosecution, the police were notified of the situation, and on May 3, 2016, Silas was detained in Pokuase.
It claimed that during a search, items including a laptop, a passport, and DVLA records for 18 vehicles were found.
Documents for three vehicles registered in Silas’s wife’s name, according to the prosecution, were also discovered.
Investigations conducted while Silas was in detention, according to the prosecution, showed that two police officers helped him withdraw the GH195,233.72 he had invested with Ideal Finance.
It stated that Kudekor was also detained on July 26, 2016.
