Tabloid News of Tuesday, 18 May 2004

Source: GNA

Electricity Company cashier fined C20m for embezzlement

Mpraeso, May 18, GNA - A 40-year-old cashier of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) at New Abirim in the Birim North District, has been fined 20 million cedis by the Mpraeso Circuit Court for embezzling 12 million cedis belonging to the company.

The Cashier, Samuel Yeboah, who pleaded not guilty, will spend four years in prison if he fails to pay the fine.

The court ordered that 15 million cedis out of the fine should be returned to ECG while five million cedis should serve as the fine. Prosecuting, Police Chief Inspector James Kwesi told the court, presided over by Mr Kwabena Assumang Adu, that on May 2, this year, Yeboah went to the Birim North District ECG Manager, Mr David Osei Owusu, for fresh cash receipt booklets for his work but the manager demanded that he should return all the used cash booklets before he issued him with fresh ones.

The court heard that when the used booklets were audited, the accused failed to account for 12,094,000 cedis.

In his ruling, the presiding Judge said he took into consideration the status of the accused as a family man with four children between the ages of three and eleven and that in a custodian sentence could affect the future of the innocent children.