ish Ashiagbor, a Chartered Accountant and the Director of Pricewaterhouse Copers (PwC) Ghana limited Prosecution in the trial involving William Ato Essien, Founder of the defunct Capital Bank, has presented Mr Vish Ashiagbor, a Chartered Accountant and the Director of Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) Ghana limited, as a witness.
The witness, who has worked for the PwC for 19 years, with the assistance of the prosecution, presented his witness statement, which the court had gone through with the lawyers during the case management and with the consent of all the parties, and was agreed that the witness would be relying on same during trial.
Same was also adopted as his evidence in chief and was read to the hearing of the court.
Mr Ashiagbor told the court that the Bank of Ghana (BoG) revoked the licence of Capital Bank and appointed him and one Eric Asase as Joint Receivers for the purposes of winding up the work of the bank.
They discovered three major things, which were that out of GH¢600 million received by the bank from BoG, 25.5 per cent was paid to the director, GH¢120 million was utilised as liquidity support, and some invoices rediscounted.
He said Capital Bank approved some monies for some companies adding that GH¢17 million was transferred to the account of the forth accused person, Kate Quartey Papafio at Cal Bank, which she transferred back to Capital Bank.
Mr Ashiagbor said in August 2017, Kate went to the BoG to withdraw the amount but was prevented. She wrote again in September 2017 to the bank for the said amount to be paid.
The witness said he later wrote to Kate on October 19, 2017, to show the proof of claim adding that they noticed her act was part of the financial reengineering scheme of the bank.
During cross examination by Mr Thaddeus Sory, Counsel for Ato Essien, the witness confirmed to tendering a report by PwC on its investigation on suspicious transactions by Capital Bank.
He said PwC was a corporate entity and the report was prepared pursuant to the provision of section 126(3A) of Act 920, which required the joint receivers to report at the BoG.
When asked whether by virtue of the Act, PwC was not appointed by BoG as joint receivers of the bank and therefore had no legal mandate to prepare the report for the BoG, the witness answered that the BoG appointed them as joint receivers and the Act […]