[ad_1]
General News on Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Source: Graphic.com.gh
2019-04-30
Photo file
Daniel Duku, former chairman and CEO of the Venture Capital Trust Fund (VCTF), was indicted with five other people for causing a financial loss of 42.8 million GH ¢ in the state.
The others are Richard Lbadey Agbenyefia, former Member of Parliament and former member of the Board of VCTF (the Board); Irene Anti-Mensah, who held dual Duku executive badistant positions, was responsible for VCTF's investments; Kofi Sarpong, was an investment officer of VCTF; Frank Aboagye Mensah, a businessman, and Charity Opoku, also known as Charity Ameyaw, accountant at VCTF.
They have been accused of 86 counts of intentionally causing financial losses to the state, of committing crimes, of stealing, of having defrauded false pretenses and made false checks.
An indictment signed by Mrs. Yvonne Attakora Obuobisa, Director of Public Prosecutions, on behalf of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Mrs. Gloria Afua Akuffo, detailing the charges against the six men.
It has been filed in the High Court Registry and the defendants will be brought to trial on Friday, May 3, 2019, a source at the Attorney General's office, Mabel Aku Baneseh, told the source of the Attorney General's office.
facts
According to the facts, Duku facilitated the recruitment of Irene and Sarpong, who were his co-workers at the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPA), which was then a council.
Upon taking office, Duku set up a lending facility called the Development Assistance Fund (DAF), which aimed to provide credit directly to individuals and businesses, in flagrant violation of the VCTF Act and contrary to VCTF's objectives.
Despite the advice of VCTF's lawyers on the illegality of the proposed loan system, Duku would have managed to get the board's approval for the establishment of the DAF system.
According to the prosecution, Duku, with the approval of the board, could only approve loans of up to 30 000 GH ¢.
Any loan exceeding GH ¢ 30 000 was subject to the approval of the Council. The Council also approved strict guidelines under which loans must be disbursed.
An amount of 1 000 000 GH, which was later increased to 2 000 000 GH, was approved by the Council as a revolving fund of the DAF project.
According to the prosecution, investigations revealed that Mr. Duku had paid various sums of money under this program, the total of which far exceeded the approved amount of 2 million GH.
Prior to the appointment of Duku as CEO and the creation of DAF, VCTF managed an existing system that provided loans to farmers in the Northern and Brong Ahafo regions for sorghum cultivation.
This loan system known as the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) provided loans to certain Venture Capital Financing Companies (VCFCs), namely SINAPI ABA and Techno Serve Company Limited, for the purpose of granting loans to farmers.
The SPV had a minimum of 50,000 GH and 500,000 GH as the maximum amount that could be paid at any given time to venture capital companies.
This program worked successfully until Duku took the lead in June 2010, when the project stopped.
However, around October 2010, the SPV was reintroduced at the instance of Mr. Duku (with the approval of the board of directors), this time to be controlled directly from his office. He could, however, approve only loans of up to 50 000 GH. Any loan amount above the threshold of 50 000 GH must be approved by the Council.
Contrary to, and in flagrant disregard of the board-approved thresholds for the CEO, the former CEO has persistently approved loans allegedly under DAF and SPV well above his threshold directly to a number of companies some of which were non-existent. Some of these fictitious companies had addresses that belonged to him.
The accused used the names of a number of companies owned by others to obtain loans without the knowledge of the owners of these companies, without their permission and without their consent.
The 6th accused, who at all times was VCTF's accountant and a VCTF signatory, badisted the first accused by signing blank checks to provide loans to some of these companies during his leave. Some of the checks were issued even before the purported loan applications were received. The first accused, using these blank checks signed by the sixth accused, made loans totaling 4,240,000 GH ¢, resulting in a total loss of 12,601,796. , 25 GH ¢, corresponding to the principal and accrued interest of the Fund.
After becoming aware of the financial problems facing the Fund, the Council asked the first accused in 2013 to stop paying out loans under the DAF scheme and instead focus on recoveries. However, the first accused misled the board by stating that he had recovered 81% of the outstanding loans against DAF when he knew that this was false and therefore obtained the authorization of the Board of Directors. resume disbursements under the DAF scheme. At the request of the first accused, the Commission, relying on the false report of the first accused, raised the DAF fund from 1.500.000 GH ¢ to 2.000.000 GH ¢.
Again, in January 2015, the Commission ordered the first accused to permanently terminate loan disbursements and focus on recovering loans already disbursed. The first accused ignored these instructions and authorized more loans without the Council's knowledge or ownership. In June 2015, although the first accused was terminated, he remained in office until September 2015, during which time he granted additional loans to companies, some of which belonged to his driver. official and some friends. During this period, the first accused was awarded twenty-six thousand and sixty
Three dollars ($ 26,063) to attend an official program in the United States of America. Even though the first accused did not follow the program, he did not pay the money to the chest and dishonestly took the total amount. After realizing that the first accused had not attended the program, the Commission ordered him to repay Twenty-six thousand and sixty-three dollars ($ 26,063) to VCTF, in response to this directive. , after which the first accused had issued fake checks, which were dishonored. upon presentation to the bank.
The second defendant also obtained corporate name loans on the basis of misrepresentations to VCTF, unknowingly, the authorization or approval of the owners of the companies, while in other cases the loans had been obtained on behalf of nonexistent companies.
The 3rd and 4th accused, responsible for badessing and processing loan applications from VCTF, did not exercise due diligence on the loan applicants, but rather facilitated the provision of loans through falsified records by entering false information on loan application forms.
It was established that the 5th accused had used non-existent companies to obtain loans from VCTF and had acted with the 1st, 3rd and 4th accused to dishonestly allocate various amounts of money from VCTF on behalf of these companies.
The evidence will show that these and other acts committed by the accused resulted in the loss of more than GH ¢ 42,856,470.21 to the Republic.
It is for these reasons that the accused are brought before this honorable court.
Source link
