Three bank officials, including a female, of the Tano-Agya Rural Bank are in the grips of the law for allegedly embezzling millions of money belonging to the bank.

The three have since been granted a bail of ? 20 million each with one surety by a Sunyani circuit court presided by His Lordship Mr. G.H. Kofi Debrah.

They have pleaded not guilty to the offence.

The accused are Opoku Asuboteng, the branch manager, Cecilia Antwi, a cashier, and George Sefa Boateng, a clerk, all of the main branch of the bank.

The facts of the case, as presented by Inspector Kingsley Baafi, prosecuting, are that on October 13, 1999, the complainant, also the acting supervising manager of the rural bank, with its head office at Dadiesoaba in the Asutifi district of the Brong Ahafo, visited the Mim branch of the bank for inspection.

During the inspection, according to the prosecutor, the Ag. Manager detected that huge sums of money had been misappropriated.

Inspector Baafi told the court that the complainant later reported the act to the board of the bank, which then instructed him to make an official report to the police. The police after further investigations later arrested them.

He continued that the board in order to ascertain the truth in the case invited Alex Thompson & Co., chartered accountants, to audit the Mim branch accounts of the bank.

They accused persons were asked to assist the auditors in their auditing, but only George Boateng turned up.

After the auditing, it came to light that Asubonteng and Cecilia Antwi jointly stole ? 22.4 million.

Again, it was established that during the same period, Cecilia Antwi collected ? 900,000 old cedi notes to change into new ones, but had failed to account for it.

The Audit also revealed that Sefa Boateng had also stolen ?7.5 million.

The offence was pointed out to him and he accepted the finding and later made an undertaking to refund the money, but has since failed to do so.

Based on this, they were arraigned before the circuit court on February 12, last year.

At their appearance at the court on February 4, 2003, the complainant failed to turned up.

The presiding judge warned that he wanted to dispose of the case early and for that reason he requested the complainant to make it a point to attend the court's sitting for a speedy trial of the case.

It was adjourned to February 11, this year.