Private legal practitioner, Martin Luther Kpebu, has said there wasn’t enough forensics regarding the prosecution on the collapse of Capital Bank.
He says the Board Chairman of the bank, Rev. Dr. Mensah Otabil should have been hauled before the court of law to equally answer questions relating to the collapse of the bank.
According to him, the amount involved in leading to the bank’s insolvency is so huge that it couldn’t have occurred without the knowledge of the Board.
William Ato Essien, the Chief Executive Officer of the Bank has been jailed 15 years for his role in collapsing the bank after stealing huge sums of monies given by the Bank of Ghana to resuscitate Capital Bank when it was becoming insolvent.
After paying GHC37 million out of the GHC90 million he was required to pay, despite being granted so much grace period, the court has ruled that Mr. Ato Essien spends 15 years in jail for his crime.
Meanwhile, private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu says the amount involved is so huge that the Board Chairman of the Bank, Rev. Mensah Otabil, could be oblivious of.
According to him, there are calls for the Rev. Minister to be equally hauled to answer to questions on the matter, the reason he is calling for another investigation to be launched to drag Mensah Otabil in the matter.
“Rev. Mensah-Otabil has not been called to answer questions, it means that he’s not been to the court of law for his role [in the collapse of the bank]. So it means that we have to do another investigation,” he told Alfred Ocansey Saturday, October 14, 2023 on TV3’s The KeyPoints.
He explained that, just as the Attorney-General has delegated some of its prosecutorial powers to the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), the office can equally delegate some private lawyers to undertake similar acts in such circumstances.
His reason, he indicated was that, the OSP cannot solely look into all cases that possess an element of corruption and corruption-related, and therefore requires further hands to rope in just as it happens in the United States.
“So we can delegate private lawyers who are not affiliated to the government to look into it because the voice of the people is the voice of God,” he suggested.
Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney-General, Alfred Tuah-Yeboah, speaking on the same programme noted that despite the probability that the Board would have been consulted is high, he, however, cannot tell when exactly members were invited unless he fact-checks.
“If you’re accused of stealing company’s property, one of the defence that you may mount is that, the board gave you their consent so you’ve not stolen, and for that matter the board would have to be consulted to find out whether indeed they consented to you taking that money so it will not be surprising if the board is actually involved in this particular investigation [but] I don’t know exactly when they were questioned,” he averred.
He added that the case has not been closed and could be opened at anytime to bring whoever is implicated to book.
“Based on the investigations and evidence available way back in 2017, 2018 up to last Thursday, that was what we had but it’s not closed because it’s a criminal matter,” he indicated.
